This notion that an author like Calloway will “be embarrassed she wrote that one day” is one conveniently created by those that cultivate the very shame that will provoke that embarrassment. Perhaps we refer to women’s documentation of their experiences as confessionals because they’ve been previously relegated to private, hushed whispers, secrets confessed outside of what we deem to be “serious literature.” Put simply, when one does not own the mainstream narrative, one is forced to either infiltrate it or create a new one, and when young women are shamed out of the agency to write their own stories, we are creating a gap in the narrative that is a loss for all of us.

Stacey May Fowles, “In Defence of the Confession”