The Apology
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5.0 • 8 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of The Vagina Monologues-a powerful, life-changing examination of abuse and atonement.
"A triumph of artistry and empathy." -Naomi Klein
"A crucial step forward . . . This is an urgently needed book right now." -Jane Fonda
"Courageous, transformative, and yes-healing." -Anne Lamott
Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her. The Apology, written by Eve from her father's point of view in the words she longed to hear, attempts to transform the abuse she suffered with unflinching truthfulness, compassion, and an expansive vision for the future.
Through The Apology Eve has set out to provide a new way for herself and a possible road for others, so that survivors of abuse may finally envision how to be free. She grapples with questions she has sought answers to since she first realized the impact of her father's abuse on her life: How do we offer a doorway rather than a locked cell? How do we move from humiliation to revelation, from curtailing behavior to changing it, from condemning perpetrators to calling them to reckoning? What will it take for abusers to genuinely apologize?
Remarkable and original, The Apology is an acutely transformational look at how, from the wounds of sexual abuse, we can begin to re-emerge and heal. It is revolutionary, asking everything of each of us: courage, honesty, and forgiveness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This bold, brutal, and ultimately healing narrative by playwright Ensler exposes the origin story of her ground-breaking play The Vagina Monologues through searing reflections on incest and abuse. Ensler assumes the voice of her father, Arthur, who died 31 years earlier, in a tormented letter addressed to "Dear Evie." Following a repressed, abusive childhood, business executive Arthur crafted a charming persona as "a synthetic remedy... to soul sickness." He married at age 50 and became a reluctant father with Ensler's birth in 1953. Infatuated with "the erotic essence of your tenderness," he began fondling the five-year-old Ensler and raped her at nine, knowing that it made her feel like "a dirty shameful girl." Physical abuse toward Ensler escalated through her teenage years: "I wanted you dead... I had to kill what I had already destroyed." Ensler writes in the introduction, "I have had to conjure much" of the personal history that Arthur never shared, and reimagining the events in this uninhibited exploration of an abusive father's motives, madness, and guilt sets her on the path to forgiveness. In the end, Arthur becomes aware of "the tortuous limbo I made inside you"; he apologizes, and is set free. This is a powerful and disturbing story that Ensler writes with grace an aplomb.
