Preface and Introduction

This is a story about a non-story.

It is a story built around a character who is, for the most part, not actually participating in the story being built around her.

Alley, the iWOACA, is the focus of it.

Alley is also somewhere else.

That is important.

Other people have constructed a narrative in which she is central. They observe her. Interpret her. Discuss her. Categorize her. Measure her reactions. Assign motives to her. Decide what her behavior means. Decide what her lack of behavior means. Decide what her silence means. Decide what her smile means.

They build reports.

They build theories.

They build enemies.

They build victories.

They build defeats.

They build an Alley.

But their Alley and Alley are not necessarily the same woman.

Their Alley exists inside a story about power, resistance, dominance, rebellion, conformity, threat, loyalty, community, and control.

Actual Alley is frequently thinking about groceries.

She is riding her bicycle.

She is listening to music.

She is considering what she might make for dinner.

She is remembering something her daughter said.

She is noticing a bird.

She is wondering whether her thighs can get her through the sandy trail without dropping a gear.

She is living a life.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, an enormous amount of effort is being expended determining what Alley means.

This creates an unusual problem for everyone except Alley.

The people constructing the story require her participation.

They need an adversary.

They need a witness.

They need an audience.

They need someone to admire them or resist them or fear them or hate them sufficiently to confirm that they are important.

Alley is unreliable in all of these roles.

Sometimes she notices.

Sometimes she does not.

Sometimes she is irritated.

Sometimes she laughs.

Sometimes she changes direction.

Sometimes she keeps going.

Sometimes she understands exactly what is happening and decides she has better things to do.

Sometimes nothing is happening at all.

This makes her very difficult to write into their story.

So they write harder.

The less she participates, the more elaborate the narrative becomes.

Eventually, entire systems of meaning are constructed around a woman who may, at that exact moment, be comparing cheeses.

This book is therefore about Alley.

It is also not about Alley.

It is about what happens when people turn another human being into an object inside their own story.

It is about projection.

It is about performance.

It is about the strange human need to be witnessed.

It is about people who perform power and a woman who accidentally embodies independence.

It is about the enormous amount of energy required to maintain a story that another person has simply stopped reading.

And somewhere underneath all of that is Alley.

Not rebelling particularly well.

Not conforming particularly well.

Not defeating anyone.

Not saving anyone.

Not becoming a symbol.

Just living.

Which, unfortunately for everyone who has made her the center of their story, may be the one thing they cannot control.