Cancer Journals (Penguin Modern Classics)

'A brave, beautiful book that could double as a handbook to accompany anyone on their journey through cancer' Jackie Kay, New Statesman

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.

'Grief, terror, courage, the passion for survival and for more than survival, are here in the searchings of a great poet' Adrienne Rich

'This book teaches me that with one breast or none, I am still me' Alice Walker

Reviews

Radiates with rebellion, even decades later... she is both brave and right. Embracing her one-breasted self, Lorde refuses to render invisible her difference and the experience of pain that is somehow embarrassing to others... There is inspiration in Lorde's position, for me and for all women who have spent time in doctors' offices and surgeries... Making my way through the book's pages, I found a different model of feminist power - not a sidestepping of sickness, but a defiant avowal of the reality of pain and respect for the transformed self it leaves behind