Black writers who have treated the subject have done so with caution, “tiptoeing,” so to speak. Trudier Harris made this argument in her 1982 essay on Alice Walker’s short story “The Child Who Favored Daughter.” Harris claimed that the subject of “incest is especially taboo” and that “the trend among black writers has been to leave the subject of incest alone” (495). 1 Given this ideological function of incest discourse-to reinforce and justify white supremacy-one might suspect that African American writers concerned with the politics of racial representation have historically avoided the subject. Suspicions that others engage in incestuous practices have long been part of the arsenal of moral prejudice that has been used to justify the social and political hegemony of the white middle class” (38). As Elizabeth Wilson has argued, the “official domestic ideology of the white middle class” is that “incest does not take place in the white middle class family it is a vice of class and racial others who lack the rationality necessary to control their impulses. Incest stories and incest themes have provided specific challenges and opportunities for African American writers, because incest has long been associated with the poor and with people of color.
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