This is Not a Confession

Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Essays. Through these powerful and insightful essays, David Olimpio explores the residual effects of sexual abuse, divorce, and grief. With surprising candor and a disarming sense of humor, Olimpio takes on the outwardly wholesome landscape of his suburban Houston childhood and the complex sexual relationships in his adult life. Both poignant and poetic, THIS IS NOT A CONFESSION leaves us with a sense that our identities have the power to transcend our circumstances. "THIS IS NOT A CONFESSION is risky, and David Olimpio's voice is modern and insightful. He has found a way to share his journey without ego or shame, and arrives at the center of one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves: Who am I and how did I get here? Olimpio answers these questions with a fearless, sometimes heartbreaking, honesty that speaks truth to the human experience." Janna Marlies Maron "THIS IS NOT A CONFESSION a road map, a refutation, and a reminder that while shame and confusion may well reverberate across time, we need not be the products of the transgressions visited upon us." Ben Tanzer "'In the end, our stories are the most powerful things we have, ' David Olimpio writes in THIS IS NOT A CONFESSION. Born not of a singular form but forged from many essay, memoir, hybrid, collage this book is as textured and varied as the human experience. It may defy easy classification, but readers will agree: here is an unforgettable debut that will shatter you. With devastating honesty and keen, poetic insight, Olimpio captures the fluidity of time and selfhood as he pierces the heart of the age-old question: What makes us? 'We create our memories; they do not create us.'" Sara Lippmann "A truly extraordinary piece of writing with a superb, graceful economy of style and zero pretension, THIS IS NOT A CONFESSION is also not 'misery memoir.' It is wry and witty and brutally honest without the cheap shock factor. You will want to read it at least twice." Sarah Lotz "The ambiguity of time, the confusion of numbers, the cycle of cicadas and the Big Bad Wolf, these are just some of the elements that David Olimpio softly wraps around us before pulling us seamlessly into his past. Heart-wrenchingly brutal memories laid out honestly on the page, THIS IS NOT A CONFESSION is all confession, the reader, a priest, sitting raptly, sometimes teary-eyed, behind a dark screen." xTx"