Leah Stamm

The reality of being a breast cancer survivor is far more complicated than that of any other kind of survivor. Learning to look death in the eyes is only half the battle. Recovering and learning to accept your new body, while everything around you screams it is wrong, is the hard part. In Audre Lorde’s short story The Cancer Journals, she stresses the importance of having a community of support for and of survivors. She struggles with the mental and physical changes her surgery cost along with society’s view on the acceptable ways to cope and recover. Through it all, having people there for her had a huge influence on her health and well-being. Looking closely at how Lorde grows from the time she is anticipating her surgery to the recovery process, we see her internal struggles along with the challenges brought on from the outside world.

Lorde begins her story voicing her doubts and hesitations about writing her narrative. The hurried and distressed syntax reflects her anxiety about opening herself up to loss again and how it could open her “again to disease” (16). She knows she is one of the first—to share, to question the doctor’s recommendations, to advocate for a new normal among survivors, to be a “black, lesbian, feminist, poet,” (20)—and that can be daunting. She understands the risk of scrutiny. In the end however, she decides that telling her story will empower others to share as well. To begin building that connection between herself and others, Lorde chooses to write her story in the second person point of view which leads to direct communication with the audience. The goal of her work is to get people to come out from their veil of silence and join together as survivors to be there for those going through the worst. That “cold,” (28) alone feeling that comes with waking up in the recovery room after surgery could be a bit more bearable if, like Lorde found, there was a community there to support you. She engages her audience, addressing them frankly about mortality and the strict fact that we are all going to die whether or not we have had the chance to speak their truth. One of her greatest reliefs comes from knowing that she is using the voice she has to share her experience and tells others that their “silence will not protect them” (18) when they’re beyond the grave. Lorde knows it takes courage to speak up against the social normatives—it was an internal battle she had to win herself before she could. With her candidness, Lorde creates an authoritative position towards her readers, persuading them to use their voice too.

Why doesn’t everyone have the type of support that Lorde had? Why does everyone become so quiet and cautious around people with breast cancer? For the same reason that the first question the nurse asks in the recovery room is about what size bra and preferred prosthesis material you would like. Society has created a taboo around the topic of breast cancer; presenting it as a cosmetic issue instead of the deathly disease it creates two problems. First, it prevents women from “coming to terms” (60) with their new self and forces them to think of the cancer on soley a physical level, excluding the idea that it could have led to their “own death” (58). These are two very bold claims that Lorde makes, but they are for a good reason. Those ideas are prevalent among many women, and it is what leads them to believe that their breast cancer is something shameful and supposed to be kept to themselves. When the cancer is looked at in that kind of light, women feel expected to “mourn the loss of [their] breast[s] in secret” (58) which is what creates the toxic environment among survivors that Lorde so badly wants to change.

There are not many other diseases that are as directly correlated to sexuality as breast cancer. Moreover, even after the cancer is gone following a mastectomy, the judgement still prevails, if not stronger. Lorde makes a powerful comparison between a one-breasted woman, and another person with a missing body part to show the unjust discrepancies our society offers. To see a woman, “attempting to come to terms” (61) with her new chest makes people uncomfortable. It confuses those who would rather look and see a “normal” body in front of them rather than a lop-sided awkwardness of a person. However, when the Prime Minister of Israel gets up to stand in front of a crowd of thousands, he is seen as “a warrior” (61) and applauded for his heroism regardless of the fact that he has only one eye. If you didn’t like that then, “it is your problem to solve, not his” (61). The two main hypocrisies of these examples are the contrasting ideas that a woman has to attempt to feel okay with her body, whereas a man, missing something arguably more important, gets to use his deficiency as an attribute of pride. Lorde recognizes that societal issues surrounding women’s body-image are not acceptable, and her aim is to normalize each and every one- or two- breasted body in the survivor community.

Throughout the book, there is a sense of Lorde reclaiming herself as the story develops. Struggling and fighting her battle with cancer; looking death straight in the face, she realizes that she has gained something from the experience. Against the common belief that middle-aged women are starting the downward spiral of their lives, Lorde explains she feels like she is “ascending into her highest powers” and that even cancer and a mastectomy can be “integrated into knowledge and eventual strength,” (65). She encourages others to embrace the same mindset, arguing that “silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness” (62). If struggling patients don’t know you’re there, because you’re either hiding behind a prosthesis or silently concealing your diagnosis, then you have offered no help to them and in turn become a powerless, helpless being.

Some of the word choice and diction that Lorde chooses to use in her work connotes an aggressive tone, such as the quotes in the previous paragraph containing the adjectives “powerless” and “invisibility” (62). However, it isn’t in an offensive way that she uses those words, but in the sense that women who can be categorized like that should be encouraged to make a change in their demeanor. She published her work so that she, “or anyone else in need or desire, can dip into it” (53). The message of her short story was to let others know that they aren’t alone in their internal conflicts and external struggles, and the rest of society should be there to help too.

Works Cited

Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals: Special Edition. S.n., 2006.