In an effort to broaden my own reading scope, and to diversify my reading, I’m trying (not very hard yet but we’ll see how we go) to read more widely, and more writers of colour.

To start that effort - and my own personal challenge of making every third book a book by a non-white writer - I picked up Bad Feminist, a series of essays by Roxane Gay.

As far as non-fiction goes, this is my kind of thing. The topics of the essays range from Sweet Valley High to The Hunger Games to work and college and her own harrowing sexual assault as a girl.

Gay’s writing style is inviting and chatty, even on the harder topics, and you feel drawn in by her intelligence and her warmth - and her very human failings that I’m sure we can all relate to.

She talks about her family, and about growing up Haitian in America, and how that has shaped much of her life to date.

The essays in Bad Feminist are wide-ranging, always fascinating, and, for me - a middle-aged, middle-class white lady from New Zealand who’s trying her best to broaden her scope - an excellent way to start.