 Cover of the hardback edition | |
| Author | Anonymous |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Publisher |
|
Publication date | 18 July 2017 |
| 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.
The author discusses how her father raped and abused her from ages three to 21 in graphic detail. The author told her mother, grandmother and a family friend about her abuse but was ignored. She eventually confronts her father, who apologizes and cries and goes on to tell the family about it. The author's grandfather tries to force her into a mental institution and her brother has a breakdown for which she feels responsible.
Writing for Vice , Lauren Oyler noted that early reactions to book, such as those published in The Independent , Globe and Mail and Newsweek were "disappointingly conservative". [1] 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." [2] 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." [3]
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.
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 "real 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. A therapist, 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.
Helen Garner is an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, published in 1977, immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene–it is now widely considered a classic. She has a reputation for incorporating and adapting her personal experiences in her fiction, something that has brought her widespread attention, particularly with her novels, Monkey Grip and The Spare Room (2008).
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 later life, Wurtzel worked briefly as an attorney before her death from breast cancer.
Katie Roiphe is an American author and journalist. She is best known as the author of the non-fiction examination The Morning After: Fear, Sex and Feminism (1994). She is also the author of Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End (1997), and the 2007 study of writers and marriage, Uncommon Arrangements. Her 2001 novel Still She Haunts Me is an imagining of the relationship between Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell, the real-life model for Dodgson's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She is also known for allegedly planning to name the creator of the Shitty Media Men list in an article for Harper's magazine.
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 slim volume of 72 pages written by Anaïs Nin. Originally published in 1936, it is Anaïs Nin's first work of fiction. But 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."
Keith A. Gessen is a Russian-born American novelist, journalist, and literary translator. He is co-founder and co-editor of American literary magazine n+1 and an assistant professor of journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 2008 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation.
Florence Rush was an American certified social worker, feminist theorist and organizer best known for introducing The Freudian Coverup in her presentation "The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View", about childhood sexual abuse and incest, at the April 1971 New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) Rape Conference. Rush's paper at the time was the first challenge to Freudian theories of children as the seducers of adults rather than the victims of adults' sexual/power exploitation.
Kathryn Schulz is an American journalist and author. She is a staff writer at The New Yorker. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her article on the risk of a major earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific Northwest.
Valeria Luiselli is a Mexican author living in the United States. She is the author of the book of essays Sidewalks and the novel Faces in the Crowd, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Luiselli's 2015 novel The Story of My Teeth was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Best Translated Book Award, and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Fiction, and she was awarded the Premio Metropolis Azul in Montreal, Quebec. Luiselli's books have been translated into more than 20 languages, with her work appearing in publications including, The New York Times, Granta, McSweeney's, and The New Yorker. Her most recent book, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Luiselli's 2020 novel, Lost Children Archive won the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
Patricia Lockwood is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her 2021 debut novel, No One Is Talking About This, won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her 2017 memoir Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Her poetry collections include Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, a 2014 New York Times Notable Book. Since 2019, she has been a contributing editor for The London Review of Books.
Catherine Lacey is an American writer.
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.
Priestdaddy is a memoir by American poet Patricia Lockwood. It was named one of the 10 best books of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review and was awarded the 2018 Thurber Prize for American Humor. In 2019, the New York Times included the book on its list "The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years," and The Guardian named it one of the 100 best books of the 21st century.
Uncanny Valley is a 2020 memoir by writer Anna Wiener. The book focuses on Wiener's transition from the publishing industry to a series of jobs at technology companies, and her gradual disillusionment with the technology industry.
Lauren Oyler is an American author and critic. Her debut novel, Fake Accounts, was published in February 2021.
Fake Accounts is the 2021 debut novel by American author and critic Lauren Oyler. It was published on February 2, 2021, by Catapult, and on February 4, 2021, by Fourth Estate.
Crudo is a 2018 novel by Olivia Laing. The book, Laing's first novel, incorporates autobiographical elements and details from the life of American author Kathy Acker. The novel was well-received, winning the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Tess Lewis is an American translator and writer. She is best known for her translation of French author Christine Angot's novel, Incest which was nominated for the Best Translated Book Award. She has also translated works by Peter Handke, Walter Benjamin, and Philippe Jaccottet. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.