 Cover of the hardback edition | |
| Author | Anonymous |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Publisher |
|
Publication date | 18 July 2017 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 144 p. |
| ISBN | 978-0374175559 |
The Incest Diary is a 2017 memoir by an anonymous author detailing her incestuous and abusive relationship with her father.
In non-linear vignettes, the author recalls how her father raped and abused her from ages 3 to 21. She describes her physical and emotional response, the damage the abuse has caused her interpersonal and familial relationships, and how she believes her trauma has psychosexually predisposed her to seeking relationships that mirror her relationship to her father.
The book uses sexually explicit language to create a narration style that is a "mixture of arousal and self-disgust and rage", [1] a style that reflects the conflicting desire and repulsion she feels for her father.
Writing for Vice , Lauren Oyler noted that early reactions to the book, such as those published in The Independent , Globe and Mail and Newsweek were "disappointingly conservative". [2] H. C. Wilentz writes in The New Yorker that the book is "carefully wrought", and "the writing is often feverish", also noting that the critics of the book "pick apart the authors' methods and motives rather than engage with the thornier issues of taboo and transgression." [3] In a review in The New York Times , Dwight Garner praised the prose in the book as "clear and urgent" commenting that the "book offers more sensation than perspective." [4]
Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the daughter of the composer Joaquín Nin and the classically trained singer Rosa Culmell. Nin spent her early years in Spain and Cuba, about sixteen years in Paris (1924–1940), and the remaining half of her life in the United States, where she became an established author.
Incest is sex between close relatives, for example a brother or sister or cousins. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity, and sometimes those related by lineage. It is condemned and considered immoral in most societies, given that it can lead to an increased risk of genetic disorders in children in case of pregnancy from incestuous sex.
Go Ask Alice is a 1971 book about a teenage girl who develops a drug addiction at age 15 and runs away from home on a journey of self-destructive escapism. Attributed to "Anonymous", the book is in diary form, and was originally presented as being the edited actual diary of the unnamed teenage protagonist. Questions about the book's authenticity and true authorship began to arise in the late 1970s, and Beatrice Sparks is now generally viewed as the author of the found manuscript–styled fictional document. Sparks went on to write numerous other books purporting to be real diaries of troubled teenagers. Some sources have also named Linda Glovach as a co-author of the book. Nevertheless, its popularity has endured, and, as of 2014, it had remained continuously in print since its publication over four decades earlier.
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Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel was an American writer, journalist, and lawyer known for the confessional memoir Prozac Nation, which she published at the age of 27. Her work often focused on chronicling her personal struggles with depression, addiction, career, and relationships. Wurtzel's work drove a boom in confessional writing and the personal memoir genre during the 1990s, and she was viewed as a voice of Generation X. In her later life, Wurtzel worked briefly as an attorney before her death from breast cancer.
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Diana E. H. Russell was a feminist writer and activist. Born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, she moved to England in 1957, and then to the United States in 1961. For the past 45 years she was engaged in research on sexual violence against women and girls. She wrote numerous books and articles on rape, including marital rape, femicide, incest, misogynist murders of women, and pornography. For The Secret Trauma, she was co-recipient of the 1986 C. Wright Mills Award. She was also the recipient of the 2001 Humanist Heroine Award from the American Humanist Association. She was also an organizer of the First International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, in Brussels in March 1976.
House of Incest is a prose poem written by Anaïs Nin. Originally published in 1936, it is Anaïs Nin's first work of fiction. Unlike her diaries and erotica, House of Incest does not detail the author's relationships with famous lovers like Henry Miller, nor does it contain graphic depiction of sex. Rather, House of Incest is a surrealistic look within the narrator's subconscious mind as she attempts to escape from a dream in which she is trapped, or in Nin's words, as she attempts to escape from "the woman's season in hell."
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Cry the Darkness: One Woman's Triumph over the Tragedy of Incest is an autobiographical account by Donna L. Friess that details her father's sexual abuse of her and her niece, and how Friess has dealt with it. The book was published in 1993 by Health Communications.
Incest is a 1999 autofiction novel by French author Christine Angot. It was translated into English by Tess Lewis in 2017. The story follows an anxious, depressed woman named Christine as she works through emotional turmoil following the end of her relationship with her lover and first lesbian partner Marie-Christine. Christine conveys her thoughts in a very disconnected manner as she discusses with readers the complicated relationships with her ex-lover, her ex-husband, her young daughter, and her father, who instigated an incestuous relationship with Christine when she was a teenager.
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