The Cancer Journals

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1980

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

The Politics of Cancer

Lorde’s interactions with the health care industry, from her hospitalization and treatment to her recovery, illustrate what seems to be almost a conspiracy to get women who suffer from breast cancer to cope with the illness in a manner that best suits the medical industry. Lorde is critical of what she terms the Cancer Establishment, particularly the American Cancer Society (ACS), for its suppression of information about the environmental causes of breast cancer. Her use of capitalization helps the reader understand her belief that the industry is a specific enterprise with a business agenda, like any other corporate entity. Lorde classifies the Cancer Establishment as part of the “american medical establishment” (33). She uses lower-case throughout the text to refer to America and any aspect of American culture and industry. Lorde, who is meticulous and intentional with even the smallest facets of language, seeks to diminish, in the reader’s mind, the United States’ monopoly on cultural power, importance, and influence.

Her greatest ire is directed at Reach for Recovery and the plastic surgery industry. Lorde is explicit about Reach for Recovery’s agenda being directed less toward women’s emotional and psychological recovery from breast cancer than it is toward women being reintegrated into society with little personal consideration of the illness’s impact on their lives and its political implications. The nurse, for example, who accuses Lorde of being bad for the doctor’s office’s morale when Lorde shows up without her prosthesis, overlooks how Lorde has paid attention to her appearance in the manner that best suits her. Both Reach for Recovery and healthcare professionals reinforce the notion that there is a particular way in which women are to appear to the world, and any deviation from that norm is potentially threatening to the healthcare industry’s own goals.

The plastic surgery industry is aligned with commercial interests and the healthcare industry’s emphasis on preserving social normalcy. At the time in which Lorde wrote the text, silicone gels were commonly used for implants. Lorde expresses a concern, which still exists, that the implants may be carcinogenic. They are emblematic of the greater interest in maintaining appearance than in maintaining women’s health. Though Lorde does not write directly about it, there was also an increased sexualization of women in media in the 1980s which, ironically, occurred alongside rollbacks to women’s self-determination in the form of pushback against reproductive rights. Lorde’s concerns about the pressures from the Cancer Establishment and the plastic surgery industry anticipate the conservative backlash against women and feminism in the 1980s.

Self-Image and Conformity

Lorde expresses no compunction about presenting herself to the world as a single-breasted woman. However, she is frank about her attachment to her breast and her early ambivalence about having a mastectomy. Initially, she wonders if she will experience sensual pleasure in the same way. Her habitual masturbation during and immediately after her hospitalization is part of an effort to reconnect with what she believes is a lost part of herself. Her memory of her former lover, Eudora Garrett, which occurs to her in a dream, reminds Lorde that she needn’t have both of her breasts to make love. Similarly, despite her daughter Beth’s sentimental attachment to Lorde’s right breast, the appendage no longer has any practical use in Lorde’s role as a mother. Lorde’s eventual detachment from her breast helps her recognize the new self that has emerged within her—one that developed from her traumatic corporeal experience. Lorde refers to this feeling as being “de-chrysalised,” or having transitioned into a fuller and more developed self.

Lorde wonders, at times, if she was mourning the loss of her breast or some lost aspect of herself. Both are likely true. She recalls looking at books that featured photographs of post-mastectomy women. Before her surgery, Lorde recoiled from such images. She was as conditioned as anyone to the idea that a woman was deformed or incomplete without both of her breasts. Post-mastectomy, Lorde no longer feels this way, not because she no longer misses her breast but because her focus has changed.

Conversely, Lorde argues that women who are encouraged to think almost solely about their aesthetic appearance, and who accept the pressure to do so, are robbing themselves of the opportunity to discover whatever meaning lies at the center of their ordeal. The wad of lambswool that the Reach for Recovery volunteer gives Lorde becomes a symbol of the way in which women are encouraged to internalize the idea that their value lies in the preservation of their physical appearance. The nurse who pressures Lorde to wear the bra and prosthesis is, however inadvertently, reinforcing the silence of women. She is also bolstering a sexist agenda that robs women of personal agency in favor of social conformity and the retention of feminine ideals. This attitude is connected, as Lorde notes, to the pressures asserted by both the cosmetic and advertising industries. Lorde reminds readers that there is no functional reason to wear a prosthetic breast, as there is when one wears a prosthetic leg or dentures. Her embrace of her single breast is, for her, the same as former Israel prime minister Moishe Dayan’s refusal to wear a glass eye, a prosthetic that some feel exists for the comfort of others. Lorde’s rejection of prosthesis is an assertion of her attention to her own needs—an urge that society often undermines in women.

Silence Versus Sisterhood

Lorde’s conversations with other women, particularly those who have survived breast cancer, are integral to her personal transformation, as well as helpful in reasserting her position as a woman-identified woman—that is, a woman who prioritizes her relationships with other women. This position places Lorde in contrast to and, sometimes, at odds, with other women in the text, such as the Reach for Recovery volunteer, who are male-identified, which is to say they regard themselves in the contexts of the needs, preferences, and desires of heterosexual men.

While her women friends, fellow lesbian feminist activists, such as Michelle Cliff, Adrienne Rich, Clare Coss, Blanche Cook, Sonny Wainwright, and Karyn London, form more intellectual connections with Lorde, due to their similar educational backgrounds and shared commitments to feminist activism, Lorde’s conversations with them still work to bridge divisions in race and class. For example, though Lorde only mentions her and Wainwright’s similar needs to get back to work after enduring cancer treatment, the reader wonders if their conversation also included explorations of their experiences with the healthcare industry. Lorde describes the indifference with which nurses meet her pain when she is hospitalized, but she never explicitly names this indifference as medical racism.

Lorde’s conversation with Li’l Sister is the only instance in the book in which she connects with another Black woman whom she knows has endured breast cancer. There is no indication that Li’l Sister is a lesbian, but she is a mother, like Lorde. Henry’s expression of disgust with Lorde’s and Li’l Sister’s candor when sharing their experiences with mastectomy is exemplary of the way in which men shape a woman’s response to breast cancer and recovery. This discomfort that men sometimes express toward women’s experiences with terminal illnesses and the changes that result in their bodies can distract many women, particularly heterosexual women, from focusing on what their physical changes mean to them. Additionally, it is a reflection of men’s discomfort with the reality of women’s bodies—the inevitable results of age and decay that society is more willing to accept in men. This discomfort increases the pressure on women to wear prostheses and to get reconstructive surgery. Much of Lorde’s purpose in writing this book is to refocus women’s priorities, to get them to speak to each other candidly about their experiences with breast cancer and mastectomy, to recognize each other with and without prostheses, and to focus their attention on cancer prevention instead of aesthetic reconstruction.