The essay The Audacity of Voice by Roxane Gay revolves around a girl called Lena Dunham. The essay is about Lena’s willingness to take bold risks such as being the voice of the generation for all the women. The author of the article, Gay, uses different accounts of Lena’s writings to tell readers how her voice has helped other women’s voices to be heard. Also, in the essay Gay tells readers about the tragicomic account that Lena Dunham faced, for instance, being raped by a “mustachioed campus Republican.” Although Gay has been able to successfully review Lena’s writings in his essay The Audacity of Voice , there have been specific argumentative responses concerning the piece.
Gay in her essay, The Audacity of Voice was successful in making the reader understand how Dunham has helped other women’s voices to be heard. Through Gay’s essay, the reader can know why Dunham insists on women being able to take a stand against specific issues. Besides, through the article, an individual can understand why Dunham claims that women should have a voice and why they need to be heard while doing so. Gays use Dunham’s HBO series Girls , where she acted as Hannah and the scene where Dunham tells her parents that she thinks that she may be the voice of a generation (Woods, 2015). Gay uses the series to inform the readers how different cultures discourage young women from speaking out by telling them that their voices do not matter and that they do not deserve to be heard by anyone.
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The author seems to have successfully shown how Dunham has been able to show the world how she feels. Gay describes many essays that Dunham has written which are both extremely personal and appealing and how they replicate back to five topical segments: “Love and Sex,” “Body,” “Friendship,” “Work” and “Big Picture.” According to Gay, Dunham’s filmmaking ability explains how her writings are full of energy and simplicity. Gay uses Dunham’s essay, Not That Kind of Girl , where a young woman speaks about what she has learned and uses it to explain how Dunham who is 28 years old has been able to use her voice to reach a variety of people. She compares Dunham’s work with other celebrity essay collections and states how the articles are boring and how a person feels awkward reading them while Dunham’s essay Not That Kind of Girl is excellent despite having small mistakes.
The author has been able to explain how Dunham felt about the issue of humanity, families’ ties and insecurity and how it relates to every individual’s life. She describes how everyone is afraid of growing up to be an adult and navigate the world in a poor, human form. Dunham claims that some things; such as the humankind are universal and that all individuals love and hate, cultivate goals and care for faults they make in life. She explains how every person in the world is afraid of dying and is scared of being diagnosed with cancer. Therefore, by Dunham revealing so much of her in such a smart way, Gays explains that Dunham allows individual to understand her past the honors that she has and see her as who she is in person.
Furthermore, through Gay’s essay, The Audacity of Voice , the reader can conclude that Gay has been able to show how Dunham’s life is delicate and realistic as anyone’s. Gay’s explains how Dunham has been able to reveal her openness by showing her readers how she has been loved and has also fallen in love and how she has been wronged and how she has also offended other people. When she speaks to Antonoff about what transpired with the hipster rapist, at the end of Barry, it makes the narrative so personal revealing that her life is the same as everybody's.
Additionally, it is not clear why Gay has to be among the people who criticize Dunham’s work claiming that she lacks racial diversity on Girls. This criticism is unclear because as much as the critic is real, it requires evidence as it is scarcely established. Gay contradicts herself by further explaining that the absence of diversity on Girls is not Dunham’s fault, but Hollywood should be the one to blame. Also, in her essay, Gay tells her readers that Dunham’s article collections reaches far beyond the white culture and the city demographics of girls and therefore disputing her earlier critics (Woods, 2015, p. 38).
In conclusion, the essay, The Audacity of Voice by Lexone Gay shows why the voice needs to take charge. Gay uses the various accounts of Lena Dunham to show her readers why it is essential for women to take a stand against specific topics and why they should ensure that their voices are heard. Additionally, Gay through her essay has been able to tell the readers how Dunham felt about the world using her article Not That Kind of World . Furthermore, Gay in her essay was successful in showing how Dunham was able to speak about the issue of humanity. Also, through her essay, Gay has been able to show her readers how Dunham’s life is as delicate and authentic as every person’s. Lastly, Gay through her essay criticized Dunham’s work Girls claiming that she lacks racial diversity yet it is untrue.
References
Woods, F. (2015). Girls Talk: Authorship and authenticity in the reception of Lena Dunham's Girls. Critical Studies in Television , 10 (2), 37-54.
