Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Aunt Lute Books (1995), Edition: Second Edition, 77 pages
Description
-- The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women's pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women's body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Lorde heals and re-envisions herself on her own terms and offers her voice, grief, resistance, and courage to those dealing with their own diagnosis. Poetic and profoundly feminist, Lorde's testament gives visibility and strength to women with cancer to define themselves, and to transform their silence into language and action.
User reviews
LibraryThing member LibroLindsay
Audre Lorde is everything. While there are still some arguments to be made, especially as this sits in 2nd wave feminism verging on 3rd wave, her writing gets to your core.
LibraryThing member lethalmauve
Audre Lorde, with the nearness of death palpable and tangible, has written a profoundly insightful anecdote/reflection on her experience with breast cancer as a black, lesbian feminist in The Cancer Journals. Through journal excerpts, seminal speeches, and self-examining essays, Lorde bridges the
As society continuously constrict the definition of "woman" based on her femininity, Lorde speaks of the struggles in accepting the loss of one of her breasts. While people around her insist on the use of silicone prosthesis instead of reserving a space on her full recovery or time to grieve this loss, it reveals how we reduce women to their body parts. Horrifically, a nurse got mad at Lorde for not wearing her prosthesis, proceeding to mention how one-breasted women in public make people uncomfortable. Having one breast is not shameful or embarrassing; physical asymmetry is not ugly. This constant need for women to adhere to society's brutal norms, its encouragement to hide or remedy appearances post-surgery, notwithstanding the mental, physical, and emotional toll of illness are deeply harmful. Several ideas aim at the fashion industry's blatant disregard for different bodies as well; its standards of beauty contribute to this cyclic demand. In turn, women lose themselves, solely clings to their identity through others' perception. And so Lorde wrote, "Women have been programmed to view our bodies in terms of how they look and feel to others, rather than how they feel to ourselves, and how we wish to use them."
The Cancer Journals is an intimate, thought-provoking look at a subject that doesn't often find its place in the public forum. It is a compelling dismantling of notions and expectations on women we don't otherwise notice, most we have come to embrace as ordinary. Lorde's sincerity and distinct voice reverberate across its pages, rare tears even surface in my eyes once. This is a crucial feminist text, where a much-needed societal and medical criticism reside.
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personal and the political. Having had a mastectomy and a cancer diagnosis, she begins with the dangers of silence; how the sight of death makes us fear not having done or said what we needed or wanted to; how a realisation of doing nothing or doing something doesn't change the fact of mortality. Within this silence, desire subduedly courses. This desire is not solely driven by the want for words to crawl out of mouths in their truth and will. It includes the love of women, the intense wish for the desired to desire back.As society continuously constrict the definition of "woman" based on her femininity, Lorde speaks of the struggles in accepting the loss of one of her breasts. While people around her insist on the use of silicone prosthesis instead of reserving a space on her full recovery or time to grieve this loss, it reveals how we reduce women to their body parts. Horrifically, a nurse got mad at Lorde for not wearing her prosthesis, proceeding to mention how one-breasted women in public make people uncomfortable. Having one breast is not shameful or embarrassing; physical asymmetry is not ugly. This constant need for women to adhere to society's brutal norms, its encouragement to hide or remedy appearances post-surgery, notwithstanding the mental, physical, and emotional toll of illness are deeply harmful. Several ideas aim at the fashion industry's blatant disregard for different bodies as well; its standards of beauty contribute to this cyclic demand. In turn, women lose themselves, solely clings to their identity through others' perception. And so Lorde wrote, "Women have been programmed to view our bodies in terms of how they look and feel to others, rather than how they feel to ourselves, and how we wish to use them."
The Cancer Journals is an intimate, thought-provoking look at a subject that doesn't often find its place in the public forum. It is a compelling dismantling of notions and expectations on women we don't otherwise notice, most we have come to embrace as ordinary. Lorde's sincerity and distinct voice reverberate across its pages, rare tears even surface in my eyes once. This is a crucial feminist text, where a much-needed societal and medical criticism reside.
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LibraryThing member bell7
Three essays (one based on a speech) related to Lorde's experience with breast cancer, a mastectomy, and dealing with the aftermath, are collected in this book.
Lorde's perspective as a Black lesbian feminist was an interesting one worth reading, and I appreciated her deftness with language and
Lorde's perspective as a Black lesbian feminist was an interesting one worth reading, and I appreciated her deftness with language and
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describing her emotions going through a mastectomy. However, I'm neither familiar with her work nor a breast cancer survivor, and I think I would've needed to be one or the other (or both) to fully connect to the work. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Stonewall Book Award (Winner — 1981)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1980
Physical description
77 p.; 8 inches
ISBN
1879960265 / 9781879960268