Craigslist Confessional: A Collection of Secrets from Anonymous Strangers

· Simon and Schuster
4.1
7 reviews
Ebook
255
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

“Touching.” —The New York Times

For fans of Humans of New York and PostSecret, a collection of raw, urgent, and heartfelt stories, shared anonymously.

Helena Dea Bala was an exhausted and isolated DC lobbyist, suffocating under the weight of her student loan debt, when she decided to split her lunch with a man who often panhandled near her office. They chatted effortlessly as they ate; there were no half-truths or white lies, and no fear of judgment. Helena felt connected and unburdened in a way she hadn’t in years.

Inspired, she posted an ad on Craigslist promising to listen, anonymously and for free, to whatever the speaker felt he or she couldn’t tell anyone else. Emails from people desperate to connect flooded her inbox, and she listened. Within months, Helena quit her job, deferred her loans, and dove into listening full time.

The forty first-person confessions in this book are vivid, intimate, and real; they range from devastating traumas, to lost loves, to reflections on hard choices. Some accounts are quotidian, like that of one increasingly estranged husband: “I want to feel that we’re not just roommates—that we’re not just waiting for the kids to grow up so that we can move on.” Others are deeply disconcerting, like that of a sex addict employed by a religious organization and several are heartening, like that of a mother who dares to hope that her daughter, born with life-threatening heart defects, will one day walk down the aisle: “Sometimes you need to have the audacity to believe that it will all be okay, that it is okay to have the same kinds of dreams as everyone else.”

In its complex portrayal of the common human experience, Craigslist Confessional challenges us to explore the depths of our vulnerability and expand the borders of our empathy.

Ratings and reviews

4.1
7 reviews
Joelle Egan
August 5, 2020
Helena Dea Bala, a lobbyist in Washington DC was feeling unfulfilled, adrift and lonely when she decided to strike up a conversation with a homeless man she often encountered on her way home from work. This interaction transformed her life when Dea Bala realized that she could better use her honed gift for interviewing by collecting peoples’ deepest, most personal stories. Craigslist Confessional: A Collection of Secrets from Anonymous Strangers is the result of the author’s call for people to share their lives with her. The 40 stories included in the book reveal the deep need for connection with others and the compulsion people feel to unburden themselves when given a chance. The collection is broken up into five sections: Love, Regret, Loss, Identity and Family, but the themes of transformation and vulnerability run throughout all. The people who spoke with Dea Bala varied in age, class, race, gender identity and life experience. They contain tales that range from revelations of mundane sadness and dissatisfaction to actual criminal activity and horrifying tales of abuse. Some are difficult reading-gritty and deeply affecting, and the author does a fantastic job in capturing the underlying emotion within the individual storyteller’s voice. This is an especially interesting project given our current “exposure” culture: where social media is voluntarily used to display curated and minute life details while also concealing the alienation that arises when we become increasingly more self-absorbed and distant from one another. The stories in Craigslist Confessional are haunting, memorable and striking in their honesty. Dea Bala’s work also serves as an important reminder that we will always yearn for opportunities to interact and receive reassurance from others as part of our shared humanity. Thanks to the author, Gallery Books and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
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Amy Marie
April 20, 2023
👍 good read. Some of these stories hit really close to home, and there was a kind of catharsis just reading these stories.
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About the author

Helena Dea Bala immigrated to the United States as a child. To make ends meet during those difficult first years, she helped her mother clean houses on the weekends. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from George Washington University and worked to become a lawyer and lobbyist in Washington, DC. After her day job left her feeling disconnected and unfulfilled, she deferred her student loans, applied for a credit card, and gave herself one year—one year to just listen. Five years in, she now does Craigslist Confessional full time. Find out more at CraigslistConfessional.com.

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