Behind every crazy woman is a man sitting very quietly, saying, “What? I’m not doing anything.” At some point, you realize you aren’t waiting anymore for your life to start. Your life’s happening right now, and it’s pretty dull. – Jade Sharma, Problems There’s an unspoken yet ubiquitous set of expectations we have for women in an attempt to keep them palatable. They shouldn’t be “too loud” or “too much.” We praise them on their restraint. We associate femininity with being demure. Maya, the narrator of Jade Sharma’s Problems, has freed herself from the shackles of these notions, so much so that her behavior directly upends them: She’s a drug addict. She’s blunt about not loving her husband. She’s unapologetically unfaithful, sleeping with a much older man who doesn’t bother pretending to be interested in her. Her thoughts radiate an unabashed selfishness. She’s a compulsive liar. She enjoys rough sex and actively seeks it for validation. Her language is vulgar. She’s an unlikely heroine and just the one we need. Even amongst the growing trope of “bad women” in contemporary literature, Maya stands apart. For one, the female antihero is rarely a woman of color. There’s something exhilarating about having an uncompromising, continue...