Audre Lorde’s courageous account of her breast cancer defies how women are expected to deal with sickness, accepting pain and a. Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer. Bringing revolutionary queer women, women of color, and underrepresented voices to the forefront of literature since
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If you have someone in your life facing breast cancer, buy them this book. How does one view a mastectomy? Dudley Randall, a poet and critic, asserted in his review of the book that Lorde “does not wave a black flag, but her blackness is there, implicit, in the bone. It’s been a challenge to find reading material that both empowers and strengthens me, while being honest and open about the real suffering and challenges faced by people with illness and disability.
The message is clear: Lorde’s story is partly about a woman who refused to settle for prosthesis after her breast was removed, who believes that women don’t need to have two breasts to be beautiful, that we don’t need to conform to make everyone else comfortable, and further that immediate reconstruction or replacement ducks the fundamental need for healing and acceptance after cancer and surgery.
I appreciate how short our span is on earth; a lesson I have learnt from his death.
The Cancer Journals is a book of non-fiction by Audre Lorde. I sank to the floor and sobbed, the only time I have ever reacted that way to the death of someone I had never met. Audre drops lyrical wisdoms and then follows it with a line about masturbating. audee
The feminist themes that appear in The Cancer Journal have had tremendous impact on Lorde’s legacy and in those iournals realms of social culture. Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.
Audre Lorde February 18, — November 17, [1] was a writer, feminist, womanist, and civil rights activist. Topics Books Books of defiance.
The Cancer Journals
Does sickness, with its ahdre infirmity, its gloomy shadow over the intellectual, represent feminist defeat? It’s raw and thf and unapologetic about both. I am reminded by how much I appreciate Audre’s voice and her vision and the importance of expressing physical, emotional and psychic pain.
People would say, well what do you think, Audre. Audre was a black lesbian poet from America who was diagnosed with a malignant form of breast cancer in around which was the year I was born. Would it be a life-saving experience or a rape of my body image?
Dec 27, Lightreads rated it it was ok Shelves: By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
auntlutebooks | The Cancer Journals
Currently re-reading this because I needed a little more undauntable audre in my life right now. Understanding the early developments of her life and her journey to writing poetry, leads to a better understanding of her work on The Cancer Journals and its significance. It reaffirmed some things I thought or guessed at and it inspired and gave me a feeling of unity with my fellow womankind. The violence is not limited to the excision; beyond the fog of pain lie the expectations of a culture that wants, even demands, that women look a certain way.
It’s clear that Lorde was moved to anger by the medical industry, in its concentration on cures and cosmetics.
It is as sad as it is triumphant. Trivia About The Cancer Journals.
The Cancer Journals – Audre Lorde – Google Books
Embracing her one-breasted self, Lorde refuses to render invisible her difference and the experience of pain that is somehow embarrassing to others. Jun 21, Shirleen R rated it it was amazing Shelves: This was teh fourteen years prior to her death, when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy.
In a letter to a friend, the tuberculosis-addled Kafka wrote: Oct 16, Dayna Smith rated journale liked it Shelves: Lorde, in journal entries, searing commentary, and memoir, writes about her experiences with breast cancer from a feminist perspective.
I read this book every year or so, and am constantly amazed at her ability to be honest – starkly so – even in the depths of her physical and emotional pain.