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jennyyates 's review for:
The Cancer Journals
by Audre Lorde
This is very brief, just an essay really, but very influential. You can feel the passion and conviction in every word. As she deals with breast cancer, Lorde writes about pain, fear, and mortality issues, and she tells us her process as she comes to terms with these powerful inner forces. Mostly, she writes about being true to your feelings, not trying to cover them up in order to make the people around you feel better.
She writes at length about the ways society sees women’s bodies as mainly decorative, the way it encourages women to look “normal” after breast cancer surgery. She had to deal with a lot of pressure to wear a prosthetic device or to have reconstructive surgery, and she writes about the way this just makes women feel alienated from their own bodies.
Some quotes:
< I must let this pain flow through me and pass on. If I resist or try to stop it, it will detonate inside me, shatter me, splatter my pieces against every wall and person that I touch. >
< I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I’ll be sending messages on aouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side. When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less important whether or not I am unafraid. >
She writes at length about the ways society sees women’s bodies as mainly decorative, the way it encourages women to look “normal” after breast cancer surgery. She had to deal with a lot of pressure to wear a prosthetic device or to have reconstructive surgery, and she writes about the way this just makes women feel alienated from their own bodies.
Some quotes:
< I must let this pain flow through me and pass on. If I resist or try to stop it, it will detonate inside me, shatter me, splatter my pieces against every wall and person that I touch. >
< I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I’ll be sending messages on aouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side. When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less important whether or not I am unafraid. >