the cancer journals audre lorde sparknotes

getting a mastectomy in this case) does not return you to an entirely healthy state. Since we’ve also spoken so much about the idea of ‘treating the whole patient’ I think this is a perfect example of how “removing” the disease (e.g. You can feel Lorde’s exasperation, the chaos of her mind, the cancer-induced identity crisis that is running its course. I really love the structure of this journal entry. I feel sometimes that it’s all a dream and surely I’m about to wake up now.” (23-24) I want to be the person I used to be, the real me. “I want to write of the pain I am feeling right now, of the lukewarm tears that will not stop coming into my eyes-for what? For my lost breast? For the lost me? And which me was that again anyway? For the death I don’t know how to postpone? Or how to meet it elegantly? I’m so tired of all this. Some of my favorite passages from this chapter of the Cancer Journals were the following: It’s quite remarkable and harrowing just how devastating disease can be. I know for certain that a single tumor in one region of my mom’s body fundamentally changed every part of her life and being. Lorde reminds us that a patient’s experience with disease is not isolated within the region that is afflicted – disease can be all-consuming, changing our minds, our relationships, and the way we see the world.

Being a patient of such a disease makes you question your very existence – you question why this happened to you, why your body would allow such a thing to happen, and question how this disease has changed the person you see when you look in the mirror.

I think these journal entries also add a lot of dimension to how we consider illness and disease – cancer is not just about tumors, or about cells that have diverged from their normal cycle. These entries give texture to her narrative and contrast her reflections on the past with what she was feeling in the moment of or while coming to terms with illness. Something that I absolutely adored about this piece was Lorde’s choice to recount her narrative largely through a series of journal entries.

Though Lorde’s experience with breast cancer is undoubtedly unique, I couldn’t help but reflect on my mother’s experience with breast cancer and find similarities between their narratives. Audre Lorde’s Breast Cancer: A Black Lesbian Feminist Experience was touching and poignant on many levels.

The cancer journals audre lorde sparknotes