Back to Blog
Lorde the cancer journals6/26/2023 ![]() ![]() I have said in my own life the difficulty of being a cancer patient is that others don’t want to confront their own mortality and so they brush aside my comments about how awful the whole experience is. I cheered her remarks that the prosthesis seemed more for others than for her. ![]() By using a prosthesis, she argues, women are protected from grappling with the post-mastectomy identity (an issue which many of us cancer patients know well.) Even her own surgeon’s office and the women who counseled Lorde in the hospital room post-mastectomy spoke only to the virtues of the use of lamb’s wool and seemed almost offended by her assertion that she did not wish to use it. In a way only she could, Lorde points out that this practice points to so many broken systems in America. Needless to say, she has given me a lot to think about, now over forty years since parts of this book have been published. Her voice as a feminist, activist, and gay Black woman is ever strong and present in this work. Through The Cancer Journals, I’m encountering Lorde in a new way: as a cancer patient. ![]() ![]() Welcome to the comments and discussion of the Young Adult Cancer Book Club! We are reading The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde! Read our participants’ reactions and follow along with us each week as we read through the book! Caution, spoilers below!Īudre Lorde is a woman I have revered for years now for her writing on race. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |