"The Cancer Journals" by Audre Lorde is a raw and deeply moving memoir that offers a powerful perspective on the experience of living with cancer. Lorde's writing is honest, poignant, and thought-provoking as she navigates the challenges of illness and confronts issues of identity and womanhood. It's a book that not only sheds light on the physical and emotional aspects of battling cancer but also inspires with its resilience and strength. If you're looking for a profound and candid exploration of life in the face of a life-threatening illness, this book is a must-read that will stay with you long after you've turned the last page.

At this point, it's cliche to talk about Audre Lorde being wise or compassionate or any of those other words, but it's hard to talk about this book without resorting to them. The way she writes is just so powerful. I came away from this book impressed with her courage, but also with her humanity and honesty, and the way she didn't shy away from writing about pain and fear. Another thing I loved is her explicitly Black and lesbian view on breast cancer, and many of the passages about being supported by her partner and other women made me a bit emotional. For example, I really enjoyed her perspective on prostheses; the incident in the surgeon's office, where she is told by staff that by not wearing a prosthesis, she is "bad for the morale of the office", is particularly vivid. For simply existing in a different way to other women and not bowing to social norms - in a way that’s clearly tied to her experience as a lesbian and Black woman - Lorde is perceived as threatening to the other (presumably straight, white, and conventional) women.

Coming from a public health background, the times Lorde touches on the upstream causes and political determinants of cancer were also extremely interesting to me - Lorde doesn't use technical terminology and I'm not sure if she formally studied in the area, but she's clearly so well informed. (That said, I disagree with her on reconstructive surgery, which she argues increases the chances of breast cancer recurring - I did a bit of digging into this, and the evidence suggests that it doesn't - but she was writing decades ago when we had less evidence on this, and I think her scepticism of the medical establishment is understandable).

I actually read this book while suffering from a health condition of my own, which had recently flared up again. It wasn't life-threatening or medically serious, but I was in a great deal of pain and pain has a way of making you feel isolated, so this book really helped me. For that alone, this book deserves five stars.

I don't think there's much else I could say better than letting Lorde speak for herself, so here's a selection of my favourite quotes:

- "I want to write rage but all that comes is sadness. We have been sad long enough to make this earth either weep or grow fertile. I am an anachronism, a sport, like the bee that was never meant to fly. Science said so. I am not supposed to exist. I carry death around in my body like a condemnation. But I do live. The bee flies. There must be some way to integrate death into living, neither ignoring it nor giving into it."
- "I am 46 years living today and very pleased to be alive, very glad and very happy. Fear and pain and despair do not disappear. They only become slowly less and less important."
- "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."
- "I had to remind myself that I had lived through it all, already. I had known the pain, and survived it. It only remained for me to give it voice, to share it for use, that the pain not be wasted."
- "The only answer to death is the heat and confusion of living; the only dependable warmth is the warmth of the blood. I can feel my own beating even now."
- "And I mourn the women who limit their loss to the physical loss alone, who do not move into the whole terrible meaning of mortality as both weapon and power... For once we accept the actual existence of our dying, who can ever have power over us again?"
- "Women have been programmed to view our bodies only in terms of how they look and feel to others, rather than how they feel to ourselves, and how we wish to use them."
- "But in the same way, and just as infrequently, as I sometimes miss being 32, at the same time knowing that I have gained from the very loss that I mourn."

The Cancer Journals by Audre Lord is a reflection on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.

This took me so long to finish, just because some of the subject matter hit a little close to home, but as a fan of Lorde's work I was determined to finish. I loved the mix between essay and diary passage, it really felt like Lorde was narrating rather than just writing. I thought it might jump around in narrative a little, but the transition between times in her life and illness were seamless.

Enlightening and empowering; Lorde's essays challenge and critically examine the very concept of femininity and beauty.

"I would never have chosen this path, but I am very glad to be who I am, here. The Cancer Journals is an intimate, poetic and invigorating account of the experience of breast cancer, from biopsy to mastectomy, told by the great feminist and activist Audre Lorde. Moving between journal entry, memoir, and essay, Lorde fuses the personal and political to reflect on the many questions breast cancer raises: questions of survival, sexuality, prosthesis and self-care. It is a journey of survival, friendship, and self-acceptance."

1. I love Audre Lorde.
2. I am thinking a lot about the experiences of cancer right now - not for myself, but someone close to me.

So this on top of being a wonder was also a balm of sorts, even in the more difficult and harder to face moments.

In The Cancer Journals we accompany Lorde as she is diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoes a mastectomy in an effort to limit the chances of the cancer coming back. While that description may give the impression this will be a bleak read, it is in fact an inspirational one as Lorde uses the experience to better connect with who she is and what she stands for.

We read excerpts from her journals giving us an insight into her raw emotions as she goes through treatment and comes to terms with the reality of being without her right breast. Alongside the journal excerpts, we get essays and prose pieces which explain the context of her thoughts and the world she must navigate as a black, lesbian activist and mother living in America in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

Lorde highlights the worrying focus medical professionals placed on helping women to feel "normal" again after a mastectomy assuming they would want a prosthesis fitted even though it serves no medical purpose. Audre refuses to wear a prosthesis or have reconstructive breast surgery. She focuses instead on learning to accept her body which has been forever changed by cancer treatment. Though she mourns the loss of her breast at times, she predominantly celebrates the fact that her body still functions, is still alive and is still capable of feeling pleasure and pain.

Lorde in no way judges those women who choose to have a prosthesis fitted so long as it is their choice. What she does take issue with is the assumption that trying to replace or recreate a breast after it has been removed will make a cancer survivor feel fine again. Instead Lorde puts forward the view that recovery from cancer is an ongoing, complex process which starts with understanding and acceptance not something which can be fixed with a sticking plaster in the form of a stuffed bra or breast implant.

It's a very personal yet analytical depiction of the author's struggles with breast cancer, mastectomy, and then later her decision not to wear the prosthesis.

I've only known her from her texts on intersectionality and it seems she uses the same approach in this book. It feels like unlit Audre Lorde always analyzed everything about her and tried to see it from her own perspective. In this book she tries to figure out how to stay a black feminist lesbian woman without a breast. Even though I can't fully comprehend that struggle she made it very clear where her thoughts came from. It's a commentary on femininity and on how to stay who you are, ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet’, even when something about you changes.

Another excellent book by Audre Lorde. Her writing is always great and this did not disappoint. This was touching and moving and i enjoyed the way this touched on her identities and how having breast cancer and having a mastectomy. I would recommend this as this is an excellent read.

This is my first experience reading Audre Lorde in complete form, and I'm invigorated and inspired to continue reading works by and about her. This is a raw and remarkable look at the effects of cancer on the human being and the human form, and about how we connect to our bodies and how out bodies connect (and connect us) to the world. I felt educated about the intersectionality of Lorde's identity and was captivated by the real-time explorations of her daily thoughts though the journal entries here. This was emotionally gripping, and enormously thought-provoking and healing. The packaging is wonderful, too. A beautiful new edition.

It's pretty shameful that I hadn't read Audre Lorde until very recently. I wish I had read her work when I was younger. I read Your Silence Will Not Protect You and this was my next read. She is a sublime writer, this is an incredible book.

In her inimical style, Lorde takes an all-too-common experience of breast cancer and mastectomy and turns it into a raw, open, honest meditation on the cultural pressures that define and confine women's bodies. The imposed silence that stops women talking publicly about breast cancer also serves to render them silenced and separated, both conditions that feed into gendered powerlessness.

While she doesn't judge women who move straight from surgery to prosthesis, Lorde also points out that this artificial normalising of the female body prevents women from recognising fellow breast cancer sufferers and feeds back into the silencing of female voices and the focus on how they appear in society - as necessarily with two breasts. Unlike other prostheses which perform a function (artificial limbs, dentures), false breasts, she argues, are there to make women appear a certain shape for public consumption, and to prevent other people's embarrassment and discomfort.

As ever, Lorde is articulate, forceful, thoughtful and honest, her writing informed by an awareness of herself as Black, lesbian, female and a cancer survivor. This may not always be comfortable reading, but it's also life-enhancing and hopeful.

Audre Lorde's Cancer Journals are a considered exploration of a body and a life going through treatment for breast cancer and a masectomy, and its fragmented style captures the feeling of sitting around in waiting rooms, waiting for news, and the disjoined concentration of someone who is ill. I wasn't engrossed by the book but it was something I picked up now and then and knew I'd be interested in whatever she had to say, and of course Lorde is such a brilliant writer that this would almost go without saying.

Throughout her journals she references her own past work and reflects on it now, saying she is retracing her footsteps, or pulling the threads in a weave. She also resolves to continue her work, despite everything else going on in her life. It is important to her as a black lesbian woman that she continues to work and to write in the face of continuing human rights injustices.

One odd thing in reading this book in 2020 is how it is just assumed that breasts and femininity have to go hand in hand, and how the idea of womanhood cannot be separated from having breasts. I imagine this is how many women feel, but considering how mainstream conversations about gender and trans identities are it is noticable how that relationship is unquestioned - though of course this book wasn't written this year.

Probably the most interesting parts of the book were when Lorde wrote about other people's insistence that she should first stuff her bra and then get surgery to make a "replacement" breast, obstentially to make herself feel better, though it emerges that this should be for other people's comfort, and other people's pleasure, first and foremost. This attitude comes from the medical professionals she meets, who she feels push the appearance of normality with the expectation that their internal feelings with mimic the outward appearance of wholeness or health. This way, they aren't able to grieve something missing, as they have to pretend everything is ok and move on, so as not to upset others.

Finally, her exploration of the more sinister side of cancer treatment in America is chilling and relevant in ways today considering the state of healthcare in that country, before and during the international pandemic. She argues that the American Cancer Association isn't concerned with new or alternative methods of prevention of cancer, because it isn't as profitable as cancer treatment. Ideas of individualism, of worrying about yourself and your own problems instead of looking at the wider picture is tied to this idea of profitability over "good" for Lorde. She herself resolves to look past that pursuit of personal happiness or comfort, that relies on us closing our eyes to injustice, and continues to fight for human rights even when she herself is so unwell.

This was my first time reading a longer piece by Lorde, instead of extracts, and while it is fragmented and is more a collection of ideas that she explores, I'm still impressed by her writing and ideas.

I think this is a brilliant memoir and a perfect read for both Black History Month and Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I wrote an article about the memoir, please click the link to read more.
https://medium.com/illumination/audre-lorde-the-cancer-journals-9d58552b18c1