Summary

In the story “Gender Studies,” Nell, a women's and gender studies professor, has just arrived in Kansas City for a work conference. She is divorced, and her ex-husband has recently gotten remarried to a 23-year-old graduate student. Nell is picked up by the hotel shuttle van, and the driver begins talking about Donald Trump. It is 2015, and the driver speaks admiringly of Trump and refers to Hillary Clinton as “Shrillary” (4). Nell is annoyed. The driver then recommends a barbecue restaurant, and Nell reflects on the fact that she and her former husband had both stopped being vegetarians without telling one another. At the hotel, she tips the driver $20, feeling too embarrassed to ask for change back, and then tells him that “There's no way Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee for president” (8). The driver is not bothered...