The next time I saw her was on the cover of the New York Times Magazine.
My only thought being how she scored a first class seat. I saw her once more as I walked through first class to my coach seat. Again, I had no idea who she was and so I made no effort to talk to her. I didn’t think much of it other than the fact that I remembered her from the panel as the large women whose parents were Haitian immigrants. I walked away feeling sort of silly for still harboring adolescent angst.Īt the airport a few days later, Roxane Gay was sitting at same gate as my flight back to Atlanta. Why was she on the panel? When did she get a book published? Consequently, when the panel was done, rather than seizing the opportunity to talk to Roxane Gay, I went to verify if it was in fact Tracy. And when I realized it was her, I felt the same sense of competition I felt in middle school. I’m not sure why that stuck out in my mind because during most of the discussion I was obsessing over the fact that a childhood nemesis was one of the panelists.įor a good portion of the talk I wondered if that could really be Tracy from middle school. Roxane Gay was one of the women who talked about coming from that experience. At one point during the panel, a few of the panelist mentioned they were children of Haitian immigrants. It was a collection of Black women authors talking about the Black female protagonist. I first saw Roxane Gay on a panel at AWP.
