Women tend to apologize. I, a woman, toss apologies here & there, as if playing ring toss to win the world. I do not aim at a singular target. I pick up ducks whose colored dots mean something—a different reason for guilt. & guilt-trips, though they are inherently trips, burrow me, the traveler, in inner-city first-floor hotel rooms, where the view is dark & damp; frankly there is no view at all. Women, my apologies. I am #sorrynotsorry for the #sorrynotsorry movement, which did not win the war on apology, but did equip the troops with a bossier attitude. People who interact with me, including women, take my apologies for granted; another shipment lies in wait.

The apology epidemic extends to women writers, specifically those writing nonfiction. They provide disclaimers for their work in case something goes wrong, someone finds issue. The disclaimers almost never take on common apologetic terminology, like “sorry” or “forgive me,” though some do. Many readers drift past them because they read more like explanations. Many are explanations. I find them everywhere. I call them “expologies.” On one hand, I admire authors’ being able to recognize potential holes in their work: a missing perspective, inaccessible or inaccurate information, imperfect terminology. On the other, I am concerned they prematurely apologize for what, in most cases, is hard, vulnerable criticism. Criticism that’s probably already less holey than others since the sport of apology is awareness.

I mean only to incriminate books on my own reading list, which is as subjective as any other. However, it has been possible for me to accrue a sizable list of examples in the course of a month, & because there’s a cap to how much I can read, expologies must be widespread. I shouldn’t be able to come across this many in this short amount of time.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her book, Dear Ijeawele, writes in the form of a letter to a friend answering her question about how to raise her daughter feminist. Not far into the book’s mouth, Adichie proclaims, “I have some suggestions for how to raise Chizalum. But remember that you might do all the things I suggest, & she will still turn out to be different from what you hoped, because sometimes life just does its thing” (9). An expology bares its two front teeth.

To ensure against blame for an adult female who shuns feminism, Adichie boils down the entire sense-driven female-empowered book to “some suggestions” that, in the end, might not even work. What this does is acknowledge, by way of a friend, that one cannot always protect against the world’s whims, especially in how they affect those around us. However, because everyone regularly concedes to the world’s whims, anyway, Adichie’s explicit concession is redundant. What are the chances that in twenty years “Ijeawele” will blame Adichie for providing null suggestions? She has followed them to-a-T, only to find what, an autonomous woman on the other end? The chances are slim. No one should have to confirm the world’s unpredictability in order to make suggestions. It’s a given that not all ideas will breed perfect results.

But this expology, at least, is not as bad as I initially expect. Because as soon as I read the first sentence, “I have some suggestions for how to raise Chizalum,” I guess the rest: “But it’s your child, & you can raise her however you see fit,” which would underestimate the role of female support networks in raising a child.

Svetlana Alexievich, in The Unwomanly Face of War: an Oral History of Women in World War II, says, “I understand that I am dealing with versions, that each person has her version” (xxi), to communicate she is behind the women’s lies. She knows her interviewees are not providing textbook descriptions of war, & by acknowledging this, she shows people, shows men, she isn’t playing their ballgame. They shouldn’t get their pants in a bunch about her not scoring any goals with history. She isn’t wont to iron. Her game doesn’t involve shooting systemically validated facts into female-resembling receptacles. Her game recruits players based on their life stories, & the back-&-forth is simply a conversation. She explains this, so people won’t come explaining back.

Even though the book as a whole is unapologetic in its style—which leans away from comprehensive-historical & focuses more on “small great human beings” (xxviii)—the above quote serves the purpose of getting people off her back. If people who are versed in winner’s history challenge the book’s contents, she can point them back to it: “I understand that I am dealing with versions,” adding, “& if you decide to read this book, you must as well.” But by saying this in the introduction, before giving readers a chance to read the oral histories themselves, she fictionalizes the women’s truth. She counts on other versions.

The anthology that explores the many faces of the abortion movement in Ireland, Repeal the 8th, edited by Una Mullally, disclaims the following in its introduction: the book “is not a history of the movement for reproductive rights in Ireland, nor an academic study. It is not polemic nor a debate” (1).

& “This collection of work is free-flowing, & purposefully uses a thematic narrative over a linear one […] as a result, this anthology is purposefully inconclusive” (2).

I am grateful to have every single one of these books in my hands. The women who write them: fierce, knowledgeable, unstoppable. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an award-winning author & speaker. In one of her bone-chilling TED talks, she leads the audience through the many changes to her “feminist” identity in Nigeria—first “a happy feminist” to combat the misconception that feminists are unhappy & then “a happy Nigerian feminist” to challenge the West’s monopoly on feminism. Svetlana Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel prize in literature. She invented her own nonfiction genre, processing oral histories to “build temples out of our feelings” (xxi). Una Mullally, in partnership with the crowd-funding publisher, Unbound, worked to publish an outstanding collection of voices from the Repeal frontlines, a true feat in the face of opposition. Yet she says “purposefully” in her introduction in case someone calls out what may appear to be stylistic “accidents,” instead of letting the book speak for itself. Books take time & hard work. They’re all purposeful.

A step further in the book, in an essay titled Abortion, Regret and Choice, Kitty Holland states, “I had not, however—& forgive me if I was not listening well enough—heard enunciated the reasons women choose abortion” (45). Holland aims to improve the Repeal movement by opening people’s eyes to what might be missing from its charge, but undercuts her own opinion to soothe those who may think she’s wrong. She makes a point & then immediately retracts it. She does this presumably because she knows she hasn’t read every book, skimmed every pamphlet, shown up at every protest, scoured every website, every blog, every forum, that might have mobilized the missing focus—the reasons women choose abortion.  She does what she can, & she knows it may not be enough to form a foolproof critique.  It is possible a website exists calling for women’s stories on why they made the choice they did. But does this warrant an expology? Anyone involved in a large national campaign for change is bound to miss something.

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It’s easier to be unapologetic in fiction. An author does not introduce a plot by explaining it or apologizing for the twists & turns. She does not say, “Forgive me, for I have created a character who rarely offers one’s sympathy, can be rude at times, &  assumes cats are kings, reincarnated.” The character can pass by dying sunflowers without lifting a finger, indulging apathy, or resolve to help the starving dogs seen on TV. In either case, no one expects the character to abide to a truth that women nonfiction writers apparently cannot grasp. 

Repeal the 8th features a short story by Tara Flynn titled, Three: three. In it, Flynn approaches abortion from three different perspectives: that of a young woman traveling to the U.K. for an abortion, that of a religious woman in her fifties, a mother of daughters, who resents pro-choice campaigns’ treatment of the church, & that of a cocky, disrespectful young man undeserving of his privilege to “sit out” during an abortion. This last narrative is shocking, sickening. I read it & react out loud, which usually only happens when my reaction is good. Here is an excerpt:

The truth? I don’t care. Not personally, not really. I don’t care what sluts do, with who or where they do it, or whether they get pregnant or stay pregnant or not. Condoms? Me? Nah. Never liked the feel. And if some bitch lets things get that far, doesn’t look out for herself, then why would I look out for her? I’m not her husband. Husband? Who’d marry a slut like her? She’ll die alone, the libtard bitch. Haha.

Told you I didn’t care. I don’t care.

I don’t like posting harsher stuff when Mam’s downstairs. She’d never see it – she won’t go online, I do all her emails – but I still don’t like the feeling. She taught me right, my Mam. I know how to treat a lady. A decent one. One who deserves it. What the fuck happened to decency, ha? To traditional values? I’m not the one who’s out of step. It’s the world that’s gone mad.

Girls I know, ones I went to school with, like, we made our communion and our confirmation together (oh, they don’t like religion but they took the cash quick enough, didn’t they?), they’re not one bit afraid to say the most disgusting things now. To wear words on their chests that might as well say ‘Murder’ and it’s getting out of hand. We will need strong hands to get things back to how they were. I’ll be those hands. What’s right is right. (188)

The text is surely brutal enough to warrant an expology. It is written by a woman digging into a man’s head, which could be considered a crime. & yet, the author lets it speak for itself; readers let the author let it speak for itself. I, myself am proud there isn’t an expology (or a trigger warning, which has the potential to become an expology).So the question is: why is it exempt? Because even though it presents an account of one man’s thinking, the man is a ghost. No one besides the author knows him. The thinking is potential thinking. Every man reading it can say, “No, not me.” Plus, wading into an explanation can be fiction suicide.

When it comes to oral histories, however, the self-censorship is endless. Alexievich describes:

If, for instance, besides the storyteller, there was some family member or friend in the apartment, or a neighbor (especially a man), she would be less candid and confiding than if it was just the two of us. It would be a conversation for the public. For an audience. That would make it impossible to break through to her personal impressions; I would immediately discover strong inner defenses. Self-control. Constant correction. And a pattern even emerged: the more listeners, the more passionless and sterile the account. To make it suit the stereotype. The dreadful would look grand, and the incomprehensible and obscure in a human being would be instantly explained. I would find myself in a desert of the past, filled with nothing but monuments. (88)

When women expologize, they lean in to stereotype & expectation, say what others want to hear. They copy the newspapers’ headlines or otherwise provide the newspapers with their headlines. What is unique to each woman, what she wants people to understand, hinges on people’s accepting her expologies, which they do only when they hint at what is already established, fashionable, or politically correct.

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Readers—not to mention society as a whole—are as much to blame as writers. They should understand that even when a writer conducts a thorough investigation on a particular subject, there may be undiscovered nooks & crannies, especially when the subject is a person’s entire lifetime or a country-wide initiative. If a reader knows better, having grown up in a particular cranny & weeded the garden there, one should begin a conversation with the author, the publisher, other readers, & the public. Knowledge is collective. People create it through constant collaboration with others. Talking considerately & listening without being prompted would prevent women from asking for preemptive forgiveness or playing off a well-informed perception as a hunch no one needs to take seriously.  

To participate in cultivating a community of women writers who don’t expologize, it is necessary to:

1. Acknowledge a writer’s inability to know everything, all the while staying cognizant of what may be missing. & then talk. Always in this order. Understanding weakness foreshadows compassion in conversation. With this comes trusting women. They do what they can to prepare for & edit their nonfiction.

2. Accept that predictions go awry. Suggestions that may hold water now may spill in the future. Adichie’s apology is personal. “I’m sorry if this doesn’t work out.” But it does something for the public, too. It says, “Don’t hold me accountable for something that happens in the future based on suggestions I make now,” because people do form “hindsight is 20/20” judgments. With this comes trusting women. Their guesses are educated.

3. Let things be new & unidentifiable. Women writers like Svetlana & Mullally should not have to confirm what a book is & what it is not. They should not have to deem anything “purposeful.” With this comes trusting women. They are experienced inventors, & their inventions are brilliant, credible tools.

4. See all personal accounts as nonfiction. They may belong to woman writers themselves or to other men & women. They may comprise the whole book or embody passing clouds. Either way, they are part of the (hi)story. With this comes trusting women. They have lived interesting lives that may come as information.

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What all of this leads to is not a campaign to completely stop women writers from expologizing, but to lessen how often they expologize & how they phrase their expologies. In Men Explain Things to Me, Solnit makes two great points:

I’ve learned that a certain amount of self-doubt is a good tool for correcting, understanding, listening, and progressing—though too much is paralyzing and total self-confidence produces arrogant idiots. There’s a happy medium between these poles to which the genders have been pushed, a warm equatorial belt of give and take where we should all meet. (5).

In this quote, Solnit states expologies may be necessary (“a certain amount of self-doubt”), but that overdoing it on the expologies may be disastrous (“too much is paralyzing”). It is up to the writer to strike a balance between the two, critically unfolding the binary into other literary possibilities.

Solnit’s second point is this: “We know less when we erroneously think we know than when we recognize that we don’t. Sometimes I think these pretenses at authoritative knowledge are failures of language: the language of bold assertion is simpler, less taxing, than the language of nuance and ambiguity and speculation” (82). While this quote also suggests expologies are useful tools in communicating knowledge, it mentions the words “nuance,” “ambiguity,” & “speculation,” which expologies destroy. When a text is explained (this book is this; this book is not this), it rids the work of these three animals born to a magical species.

Solnit defends expologies because she also expologizes: “For the record, I do believe that women have explained things in patronizing ways, to men among others. But that’s not indicative of the massive power differential that takes far more sinister forms as well or of the broad patterns of how gender works in our society” (13). In the paragraphs preceding this quote, Solnit incriminates men for over explaining matters they may not fully understand. She includes a “for the record” to appease critics who may want to incriminate women in the same way, evening the playing field. She says, women over explain too. Men also expologize.

It is important for women writers to acknowledge places where they may have been ignorant, but only when the text calls for it. Women writers have to treat expology like painting, which takes patience. If expology were indeed a game of ring toss, it would call for a single ring to take a shot at a single target. If expology were another way to incentivize collective knowledge, it would read more like the end of a peer-reviewed article, suggesting further avenues to explore, and less like a sweeping edit, undermining the work. As for readers, it is important for them to stay sharp, but also to yield to compassion. To not expect nor to accept gratuitous expologies.

Women tend to apologize. I, a woman and a writer, resolve to change that.

Works Cited

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Dear Ijeawele: a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. 4th Estate, 2018.

Alexievich, Svetlana. The Unwomanly Face of War. Penguin Books Ltd., 2018.

Lerner, Ben. No Art. Granta, 2016.

Mullally, Una. Repeal the 8th. Unbound, 2018.

Solnit, Rebecca. Men Explain Things to Me: And Other Essays. Granta, 2014.

– Karolina Zapal

Author’s Note: When I feverishly blurt out the contents of a dream, is it to concretize the memory or to entertain someone with a surreal narrative that could mean something about my life? When I feverishly wrote this essay, feeling as if I were blurting out the contents of a dream, after finding many expologies in my reading material while conducting research for my second book, Notes for Mid-Birth, was it to remember? Maybe at first. And then it became a story to tell. A surreal one. That meant something about my life. I am also a woman writer, and I also apologize. As I wrote, I turned out a third intention: to point the dream outwards, the dream in black and white that meant something about all of our lives. What did it mean? And how could we stop it from being the last thing we think about before we go to sleep?