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A review by whaliensong
The Cancer Journals by Tracy K. Smith, Audre Lorde
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
There's just so many meaningful passages in this book from Audre Lorde that I feel like highlighting here. The Cancer Journals is a powerful meditation on living as a woman with a cancer that is claimed to sacrifice a woman's femininity in order to live (which is an insane thing to say). This is actually the first of Audre Lorde's works that I have gotten the chance to read and I am in awe of her ruminations and insight of the politics of women's bodies, especially when their lives are at stake.
In this collection of journal entries and essays following her experience in being diagnosed and treated for breast cancer, Audre Lorde reflects deeply on mortality, femininity, sexuality, and the need to act now with the time we have. After losing her right breast, she reflects on the feeling of this loss that can never be replicated or replaced by prosthesis. She describes instances of others feeling uncomfortable by her decisions to not use fake bra fillers made of lambswool or silicone, of medical staff appearing to be more concerned with the appearance of her chest rather than the fact that she had just battled death itself.
Here, she assures women to allow themselves to feel, to grieve this loss. She calls to confront and scrutinize our own lives as they become drastically changed. She calls for women to take charge of their lives and push through fear, to take what little we have and SPEAK for what's better for us and the women around us. Our very lives are political, and we must push for them to be valued as they should be.
"For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson - that we were never meant to live. Not as human beings. And neither were most of you here today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned, we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we still will be no less afraid."
In this collection of journal entries and essays following her experience in being diagnosed and treated for breast cancer, Audre Lorde reflects deeply on mortality, femininity, sexuality, and the need to act now with the time we have. After losing her right breast, she reflects on the feeling of this loss that can never be replicated or replaced by prosthesis. She describes instances of others feeling uncomfortable by her decisions to not use fake bra fillers made of lambswool or silicone, of medical staff appearing to be more concerned with the appearance of her chest rather than the fact that she had just battled death itself.
Here, she assures women to allow themselves to feel, to grieve this loss. She calls to confront and scrutinize our own lives as they become drastically changed. She calls for women to take charge of their lives and push through fear, to take what little we have and SPEAK for what's better for us and the women around us. Our very lives are political, and we must push for them to be valued as they should be.
"For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have had to learn this first and most vital lesson - that we were never meant to live. Not as human beings. And neither were most of you here today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned, we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we still will be no less afraid."