Reviews - The Cancer Journals

533 reviews for:

The Cancer Journals

Tracy K. Smith, Audre Lorde

4.49 AVERAGE

serenity_'s review against another edition

4.0

emotional reflective medium-paced

The Cancer Journals is a mix of journal entries surrounding when Audre Lorde had a mastectomy and essays about her experiences as a Black, lesbian woman who had cancer and a mastectomy.

The journal entries focused on her raw feelings, pains, and emotions. They were a reflection of how she felt in those exact instants, in those early moments of reckoning. It was a powerful choice to show those journal entries to the world.

There were three main sections. The first section was the shortest and is a transcript of a speech she gave at a Lesbian and Literature panel. The second was about her experiences more directly surrounding her diagnosis of malignancy and her choice to have a mastectomy. The third section was about the pressure that society and the cancer industry puts on post-mastectomy patients to get a fake breast to “look normal” no matter the costs.

I appreciated her dedication to putting all that she thought and felt on display. Not only are there few examples of women with cancer being so straightforward and honest about the condition, there are even fewer with Lorde’s politics making insights similar to hers.

The only thing that I did not like was that sometimes she talked with too

much authority about the causes of cancer without any citations to back it up.

feeling_queer's review against another edition

5.0

It's always such a poignant experience reading Audre Lorde—her insights, perspective, and compassion. In this series of essays she grapples with mortality, grief, and loss, describes how her chosen family came together to care and support her, and the ridiculous sexism that women with breast cancer face (like being shamed for not wanting to wear prosthetics). She writes about how painful and isolating it was to move through such a gendered disease as a Black lesbian, and not seeing herself or her illness experience recognized or represented. While I don’t have personal experiences with cancer, I'm glad this account is out there for Black and brown queer cancer survivors.

reads2cope's review against another edition

5.0

“Growing up Fat Black Female and almost blind in America requires so much surviving that you have to learn from it or die. Jenny, rest in peace. I carry tattooed upon my heart a list of names of women who did not survive, and there is always space left for one more, my own. That is to remind me that even survival is only part of the task. The other part is teaching.”