So, how does one engage in soul mining by way of The Real Housewives of Wherever? In the essay “Garish, Glorious Spectacles,” Gay first looks at Kate Zambreno’s novel Green Girl, tying it to Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays and Judith Butler’s writing about gender as performance. You’ll come out of that exchange a different person than the one you were going in. The most enlightening conversation it’s likely to provoke will be a deep self-examination of values, attitudes, guilty pleasures and cultural touchstones. The book is worth reading now, since there’s so much in it worth discussing, but Bad Feminist has staying power. And of course Gay is seemingly everywhere, editing literary journals, popping up in Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine and, if you’re among her Twitter fan base, reporting on the outcome of meals prepared by Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten alongside observations about the protests in Ferguson. The title appears on the cover in a glossy shade of pink that’s just crying out for ten toenails to adorn. and is a tenured professor-but the topics range from Tyler Perry films to the Sweet Valley High books for young adults. The essays are academic-author Roxane Gay has a Ph.D. Bad Feminist feels in some ways like a book of the summer.