Breaking with taboo: Writing about forbidden things

Abstract

Some stories are hard to swallow. They contain material that is taboo and some would say the taboo is forbidden territory. Most of us want stories that are neatly packaged complete with the fairy tale happy ending. Most of us want stories that make us laugh and coat us with a good dose of feel good fuzziness. Not many of us want another 'misery memoir'. So what if the subject matter is 'difficult' or disturbs uneasy memories? What happens when the story involves suicide, murder, crime, war, death, incest or rape? What if these were part of our family stories? And as writers, what 'do' we do with these difficult memories? While we might deceive ourselves by remembering 'only the good times', memories attached to taboo issues are often the hardest to write about. This paper reflects on some of these challenges and how we consider them in the light of our own family stories. We explore the tensions between fact and fiction in story telling, and the role that memory, imagination and reflection play in broaching taboo issues.