And so? A compilation of the unapologetic and confessional

by Renee Cuisia

In every nonfiction piece that I write, be it a required reflection paper or an essay borne out of a whim, my main goal is always: to be as honest as possible. Never mind that I compromise image or risk embarrassment, never mind if my musings reflect a laughable naiveté that amuse readers for the wrong reason. Never mind if my sheer honesty betrays underlying feelings of fear or confusion. For some reason, what truly and only matters to me is that my writing be as candid and as assured in this candidness as possible.

Because the beautiful thing about writing is that it gets to celebrate what reality shuns.

“It’s counterintuitive,” a New Yorker article by Susan Shapiro (2012) about personal essays goes, “but qualities that make you likable and popular in real life — good looks, wild success, happy marriage, lovely home, healthy confidence — will make a reader despise you. The more of a wreck you are from the start, the more the audience is hooked”

Indeed, confessional pieces seem to hold a special intrigue among readers, perhaps because authors, historically wise and alluring and in a way above their readers, strip themselves of this glamor and prove that it’s a much more fulfilling experience for readers to witness them in their grisly but human form, than in their dressed-up, smoothed-out, ready-made and ready-to-wear cover-ups.

Perhaps it is true that confessional writing can tend to get self-indulgent and self-absorbed; but this is where the level of honesty becomes critical. “When you’re speaking in the truest, most intimate voice about your life, you are speaking with the universal voice,” author Cheryl Strayed has said. Indeed, if only one writes with a high level of honesty and self-awareness, it would be impossible to get caught in the trap and temptation that is self-glorification.

The anthology at hand takes on this essential, confessional tone. But more than this, the collected pieces also celebrate being unapologetic, a trait that people only either seem to love or hate. Regardless however, being unapologetic is undoubtedly a courageous act, especially when one is subjecting oneself to the world’s critique as these writers do.

There are those who are unapologetically frank (Roxane Gay’s The Year I Learned Everything directly, unsentimentally, and somehow still captivatingly details Gay’s complex and harrowing relationship with men), unapologetically self-regarding (in The White Album, Joan Didion fearlessly and shamelessly tackles her illness in parallel with her analysis of an era, and amazingly pulls it off), unapologetically obsessive (included is an excerpt from Anaïs Nin’s journals written during the Winter of 1932, wherein she falls in love with Henry Miller, who by then was married to a woman she equally admired), unapologetically bare and defeated (in The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald exchanges his usually grandiose prose with a more sober one as he describes his own descent to rock bottom), and unapologetically in love (Nataliza Ginzburg in writing He and I seems conscious but accepting of her foolishness, of her unbridled admiration for a man who doesn’t deserve her regard, all the while compromising readers’ potential confusion to let out her own truth).

It’s not a coincidence that a lot of the writers chosen to represent this theme are women.

Women seem to employ this style more than men, perhaps because writing finally legitimizes their concerns, their feelings, which are often and so easily dismissed as fleeting and petty things.

To these offenders one may point out Shei Shonagan. Described as being an “unapologetic maverick — an outspoken, truly independent woman” and among the most prolific of her time, she pioneered the personal essay in Japan with her writings, most of which read like listicled rants, and one of which, Hateful Things, is included in this collection.

In writing these essays, women yield a certain power that usually escapes and is denied of them otherwise.

This collection of the unabashed also contains unlikely confessional pieces as they take on unlikely forms. Girl by Jamaica Kincaid offers the same insistent and bold voice the mentioned writers have above, but doesn’t make use of the freedom the form offers and artfully, intentionally traps herself and piece’s voice instead.

The anthology also includes one poem by the forerunner of the so-called “confessional poetry” movement, Robert Lowell. There is a comedic confessional piece, which most people refer to as self-deprecating or dark humor, and an excerpt from a graphic memoir too. The poem alludes to Lowell’s struggles with mental illness and his experiences in a mental hospital, the humor piece by Tina Fey is a satire piece that tirelessly and amusingly makes fun of herself, and the graphic memoir is of Alison Bechdel’s, who tackles in her book the complexities of sexual orientation, gender roles, suicide, emotional abuse, and family life through her young self’s lens.

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There is a certain and high level of sincerity only unapologetically honest writers can attain. And there is a certain and high level of empowerment they gain in exposing and utilizing their vulnerabilities in such creative, courageous, and generous manner. These ten confessional pieces have reached those levels and imparted in me a sense of comfort and admiration in their brazenness and unashamed exploration and acknowledgment of the darkest corners of the self, among others.

I hope they have the same effect on you.