Roxane Gay on Safety and Standing Her Ground (Encore)

Hey BA fam! We’re bringing back one of our most powerful conversations with writer, editor, and cultural critic Roxane Gay — just in time as we come out of Pride Month and Juneteenth, and as I celebrate finishing the 12th and final chapter of my manuscript ahead of my July 1 deadline.

Even though I had to give up my spot at Roxane’s Black writers convention last weekend because of surgery, I’m grateful we get to sit with her voice again in this feed. Brown Ambition will be back with brand‑new episodes starting July 8, and I can’t wait to update you more on this book journey and what’s next for BA.

In this encore episode, Tiffany and I sit down with Roxane to talk about what it means to stand your ground as “a Black, queer, fat woman” in America — her words — and how she thinks about safety, gun ownership, and the reality that no one is coming to save us but us. Roxane walks us through years of threats against her, the decision to buy a gun during the pandemic, and what she learned when she realized Black women are the fastest‑growing group of gun owners in the U.S.

We also get into the heart of Brown Ambition: Black women’s ambition, entrepreneurship, education, and generational wealth. Roxane talks about multiple income streams, negotiating her worth in publishing and media, and why she still has to fight for her value even with a “media empire” and a team of top‑tier agents and lawyers behind her.

Tiffany shares her own journey selling hundreds of thousands of books and doing 90% of her own marketing, and I ask Roxane for advice as I write my first book with Legacy Lit. Along the way, we discuss: • Roxane’s book Hunger and how it cracked me open and helped me love myself.[Attachment] • Growing up in gun‑saturated environments and raising Black boys in a country obsessed with guns. • Sonya Massey, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, and why police violence remains a constant threat no matter what we do to protect ourselves. • Black women’s dominance in degrees, entrepreneurship, and readership — and what that means for wealth‑building. • The importance of Black editors, hiring independent publicists, and insisting that your book still sounds like you. • The power of “living in the gray” instead of pretending life is black‑and‑white.[Attachment] Content note: This episode includes discussion of gun violence, police killings, and anti‑Semitic threats.

Please listen when you feel emotionally ready and take care of yourself as you do. Resources & mentions: • Roxane Gay – Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body and Bad Feminist (essay collection). • Roxane’s essay series on gun ownership and power on Everand (formerly Scribd).

If you enjoy this encore, please share it with a friend, grab Roxane’s books, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts so more BA fam can find the show. Supporting our living legends — and the storytellers in progress — matters.

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