Right now, reading these essays again (as I do every year or so), I’m finding them extra-chillingly-on-point.
As a chronically-ill and disabled woman, I’ve heard Lorde’s words in my head numerous times-though I have never confronted breast cancer in my own body, Lorde speaks to my own experiences of illness and disability, and also to my experiences as a queer woman, a feminist, and even a writer. The tone of the book lies smack in the middle: sometimes strong, sometimes terrified, sometimes mournful, sometimes pragmatic. Neither is it falsely uplifting (the expectation of a put-on-a-cheery-smile attitude, Lorde says, is a way of preventing women from knowing themselves and discovering their full power).
You may imagine that a book of essays about struggling with breast cancer would be depressing.
If you have the T-shirt, you need to read the book, friends. Remember “your silence will not protect you”? This book. If you’ve ever read an Audre Lorde quotation, chances are it came from this book. By doing so, she’s emphasizing the connection between lived experience, what one thinks about and what one is usually permitted to say. Lorde frequently reminds the reader that these words are coming from a black lesbian poet, and this is important, I think-Lorde is positioning herself in the world, calling our attention to where she’s standing as she speaks. They are about strength, and hope, and feminism, and body politics, and power, and power, and power. I’ve returned to this little book again and again and again throughout my adult life.īut these essays are about more than breast cancer, more than illness and disability. Though she does not step back from the pain she undergoes, she speaks clearly about the power and support she finds, the connections to other women she intensifies, and the erotic experience of her own body. These are powerful essays, insightful and unflinching and beautiful. It contains and often riffs on excerpts from her personal journal in which she contends with her own fears and mourning, the inhumanity of the medical establishment, the warm support of the women in her life. The Cancer Journals is a collection of essays by Audre Lorde about her diagnosis with, treatment for and healing from breast cancer and decision to undergo-and physical and emotional recovery from-a mastectomy.
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