The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

The Cancer Journals Reviews

• 
  leynes

  Feels good to be reading Audre again. I read a collection of her essays and poetry in 2018 and ever since then I wanted to read more by Audre because I feel like I can learn so much from her. This year, I decided to pick up The Cancer Journals, which is an essay collection that deals with her struggle with breast cancer.
  
  The book consists of an introduction and three chapters, each featuring passages from her diary.

  I am a post-mastectomy woman who believes our feelings need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and of use.
  
  How do I give voice to my quests so that other women can take what they need from my experiences?

  In the introduction, Audre makes clear why she chose to publish this book. She wants it to be of use to other people suffering from breast cancer. She knows that her silences have never protected her, and therefore she feels the need to openly talk about her pain and her journey. The introduction features many journal entries from January '79 to July '80 in which she details her feelings of hopelessness and despair, but also of resilience and the understanding that she must let her pain flow through her in order to properly heal. She also insists that it is her work that has kept her alive but also that there are days in which she can't help but feel bitter and like nothing has changed.

  If I can look directly at my life and my death without flinching I know there is nothing they can ever do to me again.

  I found it remarkable what a personal and intimate look Audre gave into her life and inner thoughts. She also shared that it took her some time to actually acknowledge the loss of her right breast as a loss, and therefore as something that needs to be mourned in order for her to heal and move on.
  
  The first chapter of this book is her famous speech “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” (that was also included in Sister Outsider) on why her silences have never protected her. I could write a summary but I think it is much more powerful to leave you with the three most meaningful quotes from this chapter:
  
  “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”
  
  “What are words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?”
  
  “For we have been socialised to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”
  
  The second chapter, “Breast Cancer: A Black Lesbian Feminist Experience”, features diary entries from March '78 to February '70 in which Audre writes of wanting to write of the pain she is feeling, both physical and mental. She tells of crying and then of feeling numb at the same time, being unable to feel any emotion at all. She reflects on how she got her diagnosis and the women ("the female energy") that got her through this very hard time after her diagnosis and mastectomy. She reflects on the possibilities of self-healing and how relieved and happy she felt when she was finally able to masturbate again, to love herself again.

  Although of course being incorrect is always the hardest, but even that is becoming less important. The world will not stop if I make a mistake.

  She also says that talking to women who shared her major concerns and beliefs and who shared her language (so lesbian women, Black women, feminist women etc.) played a huge role in coming to terms with her diagnosis and what this would mean for her future.
  
  The last chapter, “Breast Cancer: Power vs. Prothesis”, was by far my favorite and in my humble opinion, the sharpest and most important one in this book. In it, Audre focuses on her decision not to wear a prosthesis after her mastectomy. She explains that although it is a woman's choice as to whether or not she wants to wear a breast prosthesis, the options seems like "a cover-up in a society where women are solely judged by and reduced to their looks".

  Prosthesis offers the empty comfort of ‘Nobody will know the difference.’ But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women. If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other.

  I found that chapter to be extremely eye-opening, especially since I hadn't given any thought to prothesis before. Audre makes a very valid point when she claims that society treats mastectomies as a cosmetic problem that can be easily fixed by wearing prothesis. It is asked of women to hide the realities of their bodies, simply to make "a woman-phobic world more comfortable." That's fucked up! Audre is speaking the truth when she says that "silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness."
  
  Audre argues that women need to free themselves from social stereotypes concerning their appearance because "losing a breast is infinitely preferable to losing one’s life." I also found it very eye-opening when she compared mastectomies to other types of amputations because for all other prosthetic devices, function is their main point of their existence, e.g. artificial limbs that perform specific tasks or dentures which allow us to chew our food etc., only false breasts are designed for appearance only, "as if the real function of women’s breasts were to appear in a certain shape and size and symmetry to onlookers, or to yield to external pressure." I had never thought it about it in that way but Audre couldn't be more right.

  Women have been programmed to view our bodies in terms of how they look and feel to others, rather than how they feel to ourselves, and how we wish to use them.

  She also admits that before her mastectomy she was frightened by pictures of women with only one breast and mastectomy scars, she remembers "shrinking from these pictures before." Only through the process of being diagnosed with breast cancer herself and undergoing a mastectomy was she able to see and feel that there is nothing strange or frightening about that. I am very grateful that she shared this information with her readers because I myself struggle to look at similar pictures. As much as I want to comfortable when engaging with this very sensitive topic, I realize that I myself have many fears and prejudices that I need to work through and address.
  
  Overall, reading The Cancer Journals was very enlightening to me as it taught me a lot about mastectomies and how to deal with women who had one. It also taught me to engage more critically with my own conceptions of beauty and femininity and to always challenge my own beliefs and preconceptions.
• 
  Barbara

  I just finished reading this book yesterday evening, though I don’t know how interested I am in reading the tributes to Audre Lorde which follow the main text. This is a hard text, and the reason why I say this is because it truly is an unswerving example of practicing what you preach, what you say you believe in, and challenging others on their uncritical assumptions and givens.
  
  Again, I am so interested in the various permutations of enforced silences, how clearly she articulates these silences. As a woman post-mastectomy, it becomes more and more obvious how objectified the woman’s body is. We may dismiss the fashion industry and mass media’s Botox’ed, boob-jobbed, anorexic, infantilized women for the images’ shallowness and possible lack of relevance to our real lives (and even here, this is highly debatable), but we see Lorde indicts Cancer Inc. for de-emphasizing woman’s literal and spiritual transformation by insisting upon the normal, the aesthetically preferred, in the form of prosthesis and plastic surgery. How are these things, and the cancer industry’s insistence upon them a denial of a woman’s opportunity to heal herself, to re-envision herself, in favor of “looking normal in a bikini.” How cheapened, how reduced a woman is by this. This is her true value to society, as an ornament and gaze-able object.
  
  I wanted to write here that it’s in these “extreme” situations that we see the true and pervasive misogyny of our society, but cancer is not an extreme situation but a fact of our everyday lives, a reality or possibility for ourselves and our loved ones. For Lorde and for many, it is/was an opportunity to really take stock of her life and her voice as a woman, a black woman, a poet, a lesbian, a feminist, whether she’d spoken everything that she believed needed to be spoken.
  
  There’s so much more but I’ll stop here for now.
• 
  Erica

  I was interviewing for a summer day camp counselor job in college and just finished reading this book. The interview for the job was terrible; three typical, bubbly camp counselor types asking the worst questions. For example: "What Disney character would you be and why?"
  
  The last (also terrible, but predictable) question they asked: "If you could have dinner with one person, alive or dead, who would it be?" I finally decided on Audre Lorde whose Cancer Journals I had just read in a class.
  
  I loved Lorde's words and her strength. I was floored by the book and read it multiple times in the short span of time we dedicated to it in the class. I tried to explain all of this in my interview, ending with Lorde's words that she was a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet." There was probably about 45 whole seconds of stunned, absolute silence after I was done, which, doesn't seem like much unless you're in an interview. Judging by the looks on their faces, I don't think a lot of the other candidates brought up race, gender or sexual orientation.
  
  Needless to say, I didn't get the job, but still loved the book.
• 
  Tomasz

  Nie jestem w stanie wystawić innej oceny. Bezpośrednio, ale delikatnie i z czułością o relacji z ciałem, kobiecości i doświadczeniu choroby. Książka wręcz przełomowa dla feminizmu intersekcjonalnego, świeża i aktualna nawet po dziesięcioleciach od premiery. Lektura obowiązkowa.
• 
  Joshie

  Audre Lorde, with the nearness of death palpable and tangible, has written a profoundly insightful anecdote/reflection on her experience with breast cancer as a black, lesbian feminist in The Cancer Journals. Through journal excerpts, seminal speeches, and self-examining essays, Lorde bridges the personal and the political. Having had a mastectomy and a cancer diagnosis, she begins with the dangers of silence; how the sight of death makes us fear not having done or said what we needed or wanted to; how a realisation of doing nothing or doing something doesn't change the fact of mortality. Within this silence, desire subduedly courses. This desire is not solely driven by the want for words to crawl out of mouths in their truth and will. It includes the love of women, the intense wish for the desired to desire back.
  
  As society continuously constrict the definition of "woman" based on her femininity, Lorde speaks of the struggles in accepting the loss of one of her breasts. While people around her insist on the use of silicone prosthesis instead of reserving a space on her full recovery or time to grieve this loss, it reveals how we reduce women to their body parts. Horrifically, a nurse got mad at Lorde for not wearing her prosthesis, proceeding to mention how one-breasted women in public make people uncomfortable. Having one breast is not shameful or embarrassing; physical asymmetry is not ugly. This constant need for women to adhere to society's brutal norms, its encouragement to hide or remedy appearances post-surgery, notwithstanding the mental, physical, and emotional toll of illness are deeply harmful. Several ideas aim at the fashion industry's blatant disregard for different bodies as well; its standards of beauty contribute to this cyclic demand. In turn, women lose themselves, solely clings to their identity through others' perception. And so Lorde wrote, "Women have been programmed to view our bodies in terms of how they look and feel to others, rather than how they feel to ourselves, and how we wish to use them."
  
  The Cancer Journals is an intimate, thought-provoking look at a subject that doesn't often find its place in the public forum. It is a compelling dismantling of notions and expectations on women we don't otherwise notice, most we have come to embrace as ordinary. Lorde's sincerity and distinct voice reverberate across its pages, rare tears even surface in my eyes once. But it's the personal anecdote that my mom had a single mastectomy a few months ago which brought me the tears and this book. Although I am grateful it turned out to be noncancerous, to be miles away from one of the very few people I have due to the pandemic is difficult to grapple and accept. Lorde's words were not only a source of comfort but also a crucial feminist text, where a much-needed societal and medical criticism reside.
• 
  Roman Clodia

  In her inimitable 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.
  
  Thanks to Penguin for an ARC.
• 
  lavenderews

  Nie chce oceniać tej książki, ale uważam że moje pierwsze spotkanie z Lorde było ogromnie ciekawym doświadczeniem.
• 
  mj☽

  Soy una mujer post-mastectomía que cree que nuestros sentimientos necesitan voz para ser reconocidos, respetados, y útiles.
  
  
  Audre Lorde narra de forma desgarradora su proceso contra el cáncer de mama y cómo éste cambió su vida rotundamente. En este libro ella reencuentra su voz tras la ira, dolor y miedo, sin permitir que la experiencia le robe su fortaleza.
  
  Enfatiza la colectividad del padecimiento definiéndolo, no como experiencias únicas, sino compartidas por miles de mujeres. "Cada una de estas mujeres tiene una voz particular que alzar en lo que debe convertirse en un grito femenino [...] Que estas palabras sirvan como incentivo para otras mujeres, para hablar y actuar nuestras experiencias."
  
  Muestra el proceso aunado con el dolor y sus repentinos matices de esperanza. La examinación y exploración de un dolor propio es lo que guía el camino de esta tortuosa travesía.
  
  Audre, como mujer negra, lesbiana y feminista, también destaca que el cáncer de mama, junto con la colección de situaciones pre- y post- operatorias, es conformada por una separación de la persona desde un punto étnico y sexual.
  
  Abraza a las mujeres que deciden hacerse una prótesis o reconstrucción de mama, tomando una decisión propia negada a ella, reflexionando que hacerlo tiene una connotación social por cumplir las expectativas de lo que se espera de las mujeres. Y, a pesar de existir un desequilibrio decisivo entre las oportunidades de las mujeres blancas y negras, Audre menciona: "Y donde las palabras de mujeres están gritando por ser oídas, cada una de nosotras debe reconocer nuestra responsabilidad, buscar esas palabras, leerlas y compartirlas y analizar su pertinencia respecto de nuestras vidas. No podremos escondernos de las falsas separaciones que nos han sido impuestas y que tan a menudo aceptamos como propias."
  
  Concluyo mi reseña recomendando
  Los diarios del cáncer a toda mujer, esté/haya sido afectada o no con el terrible padecimiento. El trabajo empodera la voz de las mujeres desde el punto de vista en el que lo veamos. Nos muestra una perspectiva distinta de la vida y la recuperación de sufrimientos desgarradores.
  
  "En pocas palabras, el amor de las mujeres me sanó."
• 
  Tala🦈 (mrs.skywalker.reads)

  „Mówiono mi, że literatura nigdy nie powinna starać się wyjaśniać rzeczywistości, tylko ją ilustrować, a ja piszę, żeby wyjaśnić i zrozumieć życie mojej matki.
  
  Mówiono mi, że literatura nigdy nie powinna się powtarzać, a ja chcę spisywać tylko tę samą historię, wciąż i na okrągło, wracać do niej, dopóki nie pozwoli mi ujrzeć fragmentów jej prawdy, drążyć szczelinę za szczeliną tak długo, aż to, co ukrywa się pod spodem, zacznie wyciekać na zewnątrz.
  
  Mówiono mi, że literatura nigdy nie powinna stanowić uzewnętrznienia uczuć osobistych, a ja piszę tylko po to, by wydobyć sentymenty, których nie potrafi wyrazić ciało.
  
  Mówiono mi, że literatura nie powinna nigdy przypominać manifestu politycznego, a ja już ostrzę każde z moich zdań, tak jak ostrzy się nóż.”
  
  Dzięki wam, bogowie, że tego właśnie trzymała się Audre Lorde. Zachwycił mnie już zbiór „Siostra outsiderka”, a teraz po „Dziennikach raka” jestem pod jeszcze większym wrażeniem tej Czarnej poetki lesbijki wojowniczki feministki.
  
  „Dzienniki raka” zawierają właśnie to — świadectwo walki z rakiem — ale też dużo, dużo więcej. Z właściwą sobie poetyckością, błyskotliwością, bezpośredniością, ale i czułością, Lorde dotyka tematów takich jak relacja z ciałem, kobiecość i jej miejsce w patriarchalnym świecie, intersekcjonalny feminizm, czy wielowarstwowe doświadczenie choroby i wsparcia.
  
  Tłumaczenia i publikacje twórczości Audre Lorde to krok ważny dla polskiego feminizmu, dla rozliczenia się z rasizmem i klasizmem, dla walidacji doświadczeń osób chorych, dla tolerancji, dla wsparcia, dla zrozumienia.
  
  Lorde pisze o tym, czym n a p r a w d ę są siostrzeństwo i kobieca solidarność, zastanawia się nad motywacjami stojącymi za tworzeniem i decydowaniem się na protezy piersi, zachęca, aby strach i ból przekuwać w coś wartościowego — nie jest to jednak protekcjonalne mówienie o tym, jak kształtują i umacniają nas traumy, ale rozbieranie odczuć na czynniki pierwsze i świadome podejście do tego, co nas spotyka.
  
  Lorde widzi siłę w akceptacji śmiertelności, nie stawiając śmierci w opozycji do życia, a traktując ją jako życiowy proces.
• 
  Alwynne

  “For months now I have been wanting to write a piece of meaning words on cancer as it affects my life and my consciousness as a woman, a Black lesbian feminist mother lover poet all I am. But even more, or the same, I want to illuminate the implications of breast cancer for me, and the threats to self-revelation that are so quickly aligned against any woman who seeks to explore those answers. Even in the face of our own deaths and dignity, we are not to be allowed to define our needs nor our feelings nor our lives.”
  
  Audre Lorde’s frank, intimate, sometimes polemical account of her experiences after being diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoing a mastectomy is brave, fiercely articulate, often moving and incredibly compelling. Lorde was in her mid-forties when she was diagnosed in the late 1970s and underwent a mastectomy in a New York hospital. Drawing on her recorded journal she charts her shifting emotions, her fear, her pain, her love for her friends, her partner and the community of women who gather to support her. She’s honest about her anger and frustrations in her encounters with the machinery of the breast-cancer industry, the troubling attitudes of some medical professionals and support staff. She's open about her carefully formulated resolve to live with cancer in the manner she chooses, that makes sense to her both personally and, significantly, politically in keeping with her activist history.
  
  One particularly controversial decision is Lorde’s refusal to wear a prosthesis after her surgery, considered so scandalous she’s accused of lowering waiting-room morale when she turns up for a doctor’s appointment without one. A reaction to her choice that's a telling example of the pressure on women to conform to socially-acceptable, ‘feminine’ norms at all times and in all circumstances, something that Lorde then skilfully dissects as she reflects on the gulf between her sense of self and this example of social expectations she'd long since rejected. She's confronted with well-meaning counsellors who communicate via stereotypes including whether or not Lorde's changed body will continue to be attractive to men, either failing to notice or completely confounded by facing a lesbian, post-operative patient. Lorde isn’t against anyone wearing a prosthesis but she’s adamant about not wanting to hide the fact of her body and the outward signs of what she’s been through, all part of her commitment to embracing her changed identity just as she embraces her conflicting feelings including her rage - what she went through reminded me of Barbara Ehrenreich’s discussion of the ‘smile’ culture/positive thinking people tried to force on on her after her cancer diagnosis. Lorde looks beyond her own situation at what it’s like for other women dealing with breast cancer and the links between health discrimination and the realities of life for black women in America – something so memorably addressed by Claudia Rankine in Citizen. Lorde highlights the absurdity of the requirement to be relentlessly upbeat when she inhabits a world in which racism and violence against women are rife,
  
  ”Was I in error to be speaking out against our silent passivity and the cynicism of a mechanised and inhuman civilisation that is destroying our earth? Was I really fighting the spread of radiation, racism, women-slaughter, chemical invasion of our food, pollution of our environment, the abuse and psychic destruction of our young, merely to avoid dealing with my first and greatest responsibility - to be happy? In this disastrous time, when little girls are still being stitched shut between their legs…when 12-year-old black boys are shot down in the street at random by uniformed men who are then cleared of any wrongdoing, when ancient and honourable citizens scavenge for food in garbage pails…when daily gruesome murders of women from coast to coast no longer warrant mention in The N.Y. Times…what depraved monster could possibly be happy?”
  
  Although some things may have changed since Lorde first published her journal, so much (too much) of what she raises hasn’t and her words have a resonance, power, political force and even an oddly poetic beauty that makes this well worth reading.
• 
  Lily Herman

  It never ceases to amaze me how much of the future Audre Lorde predicted decades ago. Maybe that shows how nothing really changes, or maybe she really is that brilliant; I think it's a combination of both.
  
  The Cancer Journals is yet another reminder from Lorde that every action in our life—including our illnesses and our decisions surrounding what to do about them—is political. For Lorde, that means examining the problematic ways we go about diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, particularly for something like breast cancer that's so tied to women's pain, suffering, and place in society. Her Black, lesbian, feminist politic applies here.
  
  Like all of Lorde's work, The Cancer Journals is absolutely a must-read, especially if you're looking at how feminism injects itself into all parts of life; that includes our mortality.
• 
  Marta

  "Moje uczu­cia na­le­żą tylko do mnie."
  
  
  
  niezwykle inspirująca, ciężka, warta przeczytania.
• 
  بثينة الإبراهيم

  تتحدث أودري عن تجربتها بعد إصابتها بسرطان الثدي وخضوعها لجراحة استئصال، وتحاول النظر إلى الموضوع بمنظار مختلف إذ تعتبره منطلق قوة وتسمي نفسها محاربة. ترفض الخضوع لجراحة تعويضية وتبدي استغرابها من انتقاد الممرضات لرفضها قائلات إنها عملية ضرورية كيلا يلحظ أحد الفرق!
  هل ستشعر المرأة بالشعور نفسه لو بتر لها عضو آخر كالساق أو الذراع؟ لا شك أن الأمر يتعلق بالمظهر وهذا ما جعل أصحاب شركات يستغنون عن خدمات موظفات خضعن للعملية ذاتها.
  من الواضح أن أودري لا تعاني هذه المعضلة فقط، إذ تضطر للدفاع عن نفسها -إن أمكن القول- على أكثر من صعيد، فهي امرأة، سوداء، مثلية
  اليوميات التي تحدثت فيها عن أوجاعها قاسية:
  هذا جزء منها (بترجمتي )
  26/1/1979
  لا أشعر بالأمل كثيرًا هذه الأيام سواء أكان الأمر يتعلق بذاتي أم بأي أمر آخر. يمكنني تدبر حركات جسدي كل يوم بينما يملؤني الألم مثل جيب قيحي، وكل حركة تهدد بهتك الغشاء المحكم الذي يحميه من السيلان وتسميم وجودي كله. يجتاح اليأس وعيي أحيانًا، كما تهب الرياح القمرية على وجه القمر القاحل، وتتمايل الجياد المسربلة بالحديد باستشاطة للأمام والخلف على كل عصب. أوه سيبوليزا*، ساعديني أن أتذكر أنني بذلت كثيرًا لأتعلم، ربما أموت بسبب اختلافي، أو أعيش ذواتي اللا نهائية.
  5/2/1979
  الأمر الرهيب هذه الأيام أن لا شيء يعبرني، لا شيء. كل رعب يظل مثل ملزمة فولاذية في لحمي، مغناطيس آخر يسحبني إلى اللهب، محراث انضم إلى قائمة الموت التافهة الرديئة للشباب السود. ألا يمكنني أن أعرف اللغة التي كتبت بها لعنتي؟!
  1/3/1979
  العثور على طعام لائق في هذا المكان أمر شاق، أنا لا أستسلم لتناول السم القديم فحسب، بل علي أن أعتني بجسدي بانتباه بقدر عنايتي بالسماد، خاصة أنه لا يبعد كثيرًا عن هذه النقطة. هل الألم واليأس اللذان يحيطان بي بسبب السرطان أم أن السرطان هو من أطلق سراحهما؟ أشعر أنني لست كفؤة لما اعتدت أن أتعامل معه سابقًا، القبح الخارجي الذي يتردد ألمًا في داخلي. نعم، أنا الآن مرجعي ذاتي كليًا لأنه الترجمة الوحيدة التي يمكنني الوثوق بها.
  16/4/1979
  تكمن جسامة مهمتنا في قلب العالم، وذلك يبدو كما لو أنني أقلب حياتي بطنًا لظهر. لو كان بإمكان النظر مباشرة إلى حياتي وموتي دون أن أجفل، سأعرف أنهما لن يقدما لي شيئًا مرة أخرى أبدًا. عليّ أن أكون قانعة فعلًا لأرى صغر ما يمكنني فعله وما زلت أفعله بقلب رضيّ. لا يمكنني قبول هذا مطلقًا، مثلما لا يمكنني قبول أن قلب حياتي قاسٍ جدًا، أكلي مختلف ونومي مختلف، حركتي مختلفة وكوني مختلفة. وكما قالت مارثا: أريد ما كنت عليه في الماضي، سيئة كما في السابق!
  22/4/1979
  علي أن أترك هذا الألم ينساب فيّ ويعبرني. فإن قاومته أو حاولت إيقافه، فسينفجر بداخلي ويبعثرني وينثر أشلائي على كل جدار وشخص أمسّه!
  1/5/1979
  حل الربيع، وما زلت أشعر باليأس مثل غيمة شاحبة تنتظر استنزافي وإغراقي مثل سرطان آخر، تنتظر ازدرادي بجمود، وهضمي إلى خلايا هي بحد ذاتها جسدي، البارومتر. أحتاج أن أذكّر نفسي بالسعادة والخفّة، الضحكة المهمة لحياتي وصحتي، وإلا سيكون الآخر منتظرًا دومًا ليهلكني باليأس ثانية، وهذا يعني الخراب، لا أعرف كيف، لكنه كذلك.
  9/1979
  ليس هنالك فضاء حولي للسكون، لتأمل واكتشاف أن الألم هو ألمي وحدي، ليس هناك أداة تفصل صراعي الداخلي عن سخطي على خبث العالم الخارجي، انعدام الوعي أو عدم الاكتراث الوحشي الغبي الذي يمضي بسبب ماهية الأمور، العمى المتغطرس للمرأة البيضاء السعيدة. من أجل أي شيء كل هذا العمل؟ ما الفرق إن كنت سأتحدث ثانية أم لا؟ أحاول. دم النساء السود يتدفق من الساحل إلى الساحل، ويقول دالي إن العرق ليس ذا أهمية بالنسبة للنساء، وهذا يعني أننا إما خالدات أو أننا ولدنا لنموت دون أثر، لا نسوة.
  3/10/1979
  لا أشعر برغبة أن أكون قوية، ولكن هل لدي خيار آخر؟ يؤلمني الأمر حتى عندما تنظر إليّ أخواتي في الشارع بعيون صامتة باردة. يراني الآخرون مختلفة في كل مجموعة أكون عضوًا فيها. الدخيلة، في كل من القوة والضعف. ومع ذلك، ليس هنالك تحرر أو مستقبل دون مجتمع، هنالك هدنة مؤقتة وشديدة الهشاشة بيني وبين اضطهادي.
  19/11/1979
  أود أن أكتب بغضب لكن كل ما يخرج هو الحزن. لقد كنا حزينين لأمد طويل بما يكفي لجعل هذه الأرض تنوح أو تصبح خصيبة. أنا خطأ تاريخي، حالة شاذة، مثل النحلة التي لم يُرد لها أن تطير، هذا ما يقوله العالم، لم يكن يفترض بي أن أخرج إلى الوجود. أحمل الموت معي في جسدي كتهمة. لكنني أحيا، والنحلة تطير. لا بد أن هنالك وسيلة لتوحيد الموت بالحياة، ليس بتجاهله ولا بالخضوع له.
  1/1/1980
  الإيمان هو اليوم الأخير لكوانزا**، واسم الحرب ضد اليأس، المعركة التي أخوضها كل يوم، وأصبح بها أفضل. أرغب بالكتابة عن تلك المعركة، عن المناوشات والخسائر، وعن الانتصارات الصغيرة لكن المهمة التي تمنح الحياة حلاوتها.
  20/1/1980
  أنهيت الرواية أخيرًا، لقد كانت حبل نجاة. ليس علي أن أكسب لأعرف أن أحلامي صائبة، عليّ فقط أن أؤمن بالسيرورة التي أنا جزء منها. أبقاني عملي على قيد الحياة السنة الماضية، حبي لعملي وللنساء اللذين لا يمكن فصلهما عن بعضهما بعضًا. في إدراك وجود الحب، تكمن مواجهة اليأس، والعمل هو اسم ذلك الإدراك وصوته.
  18/2/1980
  عمري 46 عامًا ومسرورة لأنني على قيد الحياة، سعيدة ومبتهجة. لم يختف الخوف والألم واليأس، لكنها ببطء أصبحت أقل أهمية. رغم أنني أتوق أحيانًا لحياة بسيطة منظمة بجوع حاد مثل جوع الشخص النباتي للحم فجأة.
  6/4/1980
  أحيانًا، إن كانت المرارة حجر شحذ، فلا بد أنني سأكون حادة مثل حسرة.
  30/5/1980
  كان الربيع الماضي قطعة أخرى من الخريف والشتاء، تعاقب لكل ألم ذلك الوقت وحزنه، واجترار لهما. لكن هذا الصيف الذي غمرني يبدو كجزء من مستقبلي نوعًا ما. مثل عصر جديد، وأنا سعيدة لمعرفته مهما كانت نهايته. أشعر أنني امرأة أخرى، خرجت من شرنقتي وأصبحت ممتدة وقوية ومتحمسة، وعضلاتي مرنة ومتأهبة للانطلاق.
  20/6/1980
  لا أنسى السرطان لوقت طويل أبدًا، وهذا ما يجعلني مسلحة ومستعدة، لكن بجلبة خفيفة من الخوف. لقد ساعدني كتاب كارل سيمونتون التعافي، رغم أن اعتداه بنفسه قد أغاظني أحيانًا. لقد ساعدتني آليات التبصر والاسترخاء أن أصبح شخصًا أقل قلقًا، وهو ما يبدو غيبًا، لأنني بطريقة أخرى أعيش بخوف مستمر من الإصابة بسرطان آخر. لكن الخوف والقلق ليسا متشابهين أبدًا، فالأول هو استجابة مناسبة لظرف حقيقي يمكنني أن أقبله وان أتعلم التعايش معه مثل التعايش مع العمى الجزئي. أما الثاني، القلق، فهو خضوع للفزع، واستسلام للإبهام واللاشكل والبكم والصمت.
  ** ** **
  _أودري لورد: (1934-1992) كاتبة نسوية أفرو-أمريكية ، وناشطة في الحقوق المدنية، أصيبت بسرطان الثدي وماتت بعمر 58، هذه اليوميات هي مقتطف من كتابها The Cancer Journals المنشور عام 1980.
  *سيبوليزا: إلهة أسطورية بثدي واحد لأن الآخر أكلته ديدان الحزن والفقد.
  **كوانزا Kwanza : هواحتفال يدوم أسبوعًا يقام في الولايات المتحدة تقديرًا للتراث الأفريقي من 26 ديسمبر حتى 1 يناير، وأصل كلمة كوانزا يعود إلى اللغة السواحيلية، ويكون الاحتفاء بسبعة مبادئ واحدًا في كل يوم وهي: الوحدة، الاستقلالية، العمل الجماعي، التعاون الاقتصادي، المنفعة، الإبداع، الإيمان.
• 
  Justyna Wachowska

  Wstrząsająco dobra. Bardzo polecam.
• 
  Farah Firdaus

  Audre Lorde began The Cancer Journals with an admission of regret to her own silences and the question: of what had I ever been afraid? She acknowledged that in transforming silence into language and action, one is meant to be fraught with pain, contempt, judgment, challenge and even death. However, if we look at the alternative, silence is also a form of submission in the face of oppression and the reluctance to speak against injustice does not guarantee your safety and well-being.
  
  The second essay titled “A Black Lesbian Feminist Experience” is an incisively vulnerable collection of journal entries as the author ruminates her responses to her diagnosis of breast cancer, the ensuing mastectomy that followed and the paradigm shift in acceptance of her own mortality - “I looked strange and uneven and peculiar to myself, but somehow, ever so much more myself, and therefore so much more acceptable.” I have so much love and respect for Audre Lorde for her willingness to be vulnerable with the readers about the degrading and dispiriting experience of cancer.
  
  The book concluded with an essay titled Power vs. Prosthesis which is one of the most extraordinary and illuminating essays I’ve ever read in my entire life and one that I will surely visit in the future. The emphasis upon prosthesis as cosmetic rather than functional has strengthened the society’s attitude towards women as decoration and reinforced the idea of women’s identity upon an external definition of appearance - “The attitude toward the necessity for prostheses is a reflection of those attitudes within our society towards women in general as objectified and depersonalized sexual conveniences.”
  
  Audre Lorde’s writing, as ever, was incredible, courageous, powerful, passionate and eye-opening all at once. An absolutely honest work of love, rage and fear, The Cancer Journals is a very succinct piece that is the true essence of Audre Lorde. Highly recommended.
• 
  morgan

  this was beautifully impeccable
• 
  Czytająca Mewa

  Warto.
• 
  Sunny

  I thought this was quite a moving account of Audre’s initial brush with breast cancer. Audre was a black lesbian poet from America who was diagnosed with a malignant form of breast cancer in around 1978 which was the year I was born. The book is about her emotional response to such a, then and now, life changing event. When she knew she had it, it gave her a rage to live. Something I’ve always had also because of my own father’s death when I was 15 from cancer. I appreciate how short our span is on earth; a lesson I have learnt from his death. The short book also talks about what the effect of a mastectomy is on women and especially those, like Audre, who refuse to wear what essentially amounted to a fake filled up bra to replicate the breast that was now missing or have silicone gel implants inserted. There is one incident in the book where she is asked to wear the filled up bra otherwise she could bring down the moral of the people in the office – WTF!!! I liked the book and I really liked her way of writing and conveying her thoughts and emotions – she was a poet after all. Some of the other good bits in the book were:
  • “within those weeks of acute fear came the knowledge – within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not – I am not only a casualty I am also a warrior.”
  • “For those of us who write it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak.”
  • “the acceptance of death as a fact, rather than the desire to die, can empower my energies with a forcefulness and vigour not always possible when one eye is out unconsciously for eternity.”
  
  
• 
  Syd

  I remember hearing of Audre's death sixteen years ago. I sank to the floor and sobbed, the only time I have ever reacted that way to the death of someone I had never met. This was written fourteen years prior to her death, when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. As always, I am awed by her strength and the strength she gained from other women. If you have someone in your life facing breast cancer, buy them this book. Audre came to a powerful conclusion when she wrote: "Yet once I face death as a life process, what is there possibly left for me to fear? Who can ever really have power over me again?"
• 
  Nicholas I. Wiggins

  i read this in a Af-Am lit course in college and was floored. I wasn't expecting to be moved by it but was tremendously moved by her journey through cancer and a mastectomy. I believe I even had a better understanding of women after reading this book.
• 
  Manika

  I had forgotten how much Audre Lorde got to me. This woman speaks to my soul, to my spirit and mind. There is no other word than powerful to describe this book which is a blend of journal entries and part memoir with documentation regarding breast cancer in America.
• 
  j

  “I refuse to hide my body simply because it might make a woman-phobic world more comfortable."
  
  Lorde is one of my favorite feminist thinkers, writers and poets, so I’ve been looking forward to selecting my next work of hers to read. I landed on The Cancer Journals albeit with a slight bit of hesitation. As someone with a touch of health anxiety and family history of breast cancer, I had a fear that reading this might make me feel anxious. My maternal grandmother passed away of the disease while my mother was young, before I ever had a chance to meet her. While Lorde’s prose often expresses the extreme worry and sorrow she felt while grappling with the illness, overall I found the essays to be so empowering and especially beautiful in the way she emphasizes that “women healed her”. These essays may seem pretty specific to breast cancer, which they mostly are, but they also transcend to other important themes, like societal beauty standards, racial disparity in healthcare, the importance of social support systems. The topic of breast cancer can be daunting but in true nature of Lorde’s philosophy there is so much power in using one’s voice and and I gained so much through Lorde’s perspective and empowering decision to write about this and not hide her mastectomy.
  
  Lorde is a master of the written word, she constructs her narrative and message so perfectly. I want to share one of my favorite passages.
  
  When Lorde shows up to her oncology clinic without wearing a prosthesis to conceal her missing breast post-mastectomy, the nurse says "You will feel so much better with it on, and besides, we really like you to wear something, at least when you come in. Otherwise it's bad for the morale of the office."
  
  Lorde continues, "I could hardly believe my ears! I was too outraged to speak then, but this was to be only the first such assault on my right to define and to claim my own body. Here we were, in the offices of one of the top breast cancer surgeons in New York City. Every woman there either had a breast removed, might have to have a breast removed, or was afraid of having to have a breast removed. And every woman there could have used a reminder that having one breast did not mean her life was over, nor that she was less a woman, nor that she was condemned to the use of a placebo on order to feel good about herself and the way she looked.
  
  Yet a woman who has one breast and refuses to hide that fact behind a pathetic puff of lambswool which has no relationship nor likeness to her own breasts, a woman who is attempting to come to terms with her changed landscape and changed timetable of life and with her own body and pain and beauty and strength, that woman is seen as a threat to the "morale" of a breast surgeon's office!
  
  Yet when Moishe Dayan, the Prime Minister of Israel, stands up in front of parliament or on TV with an eyepatch over his empty eyesocket, nobody tells him to go get a glass eye, or that he is bad for the morale of the office. The world sees him as a warrior with an honorable wound, and a loss of a piece of himself which he has marked, and mourned, and moved beyond. And if you have trouble dealing with Moishe Dayan's empty eye socket, everyone recognizes that it is your problem to solve, not his.
  
  Well, women with breast cancer are warriors, also. I have been to war, and still am. So has every woman who has had one or both breasts amputated because of the cancer that is becoming the primary physical scourge of our time. For me, my scars are an honorable reminder that I may be a casualty in the cosmic war against radiation, animal fat, air pollution, McDonald's hamburgers and Red Dye No. 2, but the fight is still going on, and I am still a part of it. I refuse to have my scars hidden or trivialized behind lambswool or silicone gel. I refuse to be reduced in my own eyes or in the eyes of others from warrior to mere victim, simply because it might render me a fraction more acceptable or less dangerous to the still complacent, those who believe if you cover up a problem it ceases to exist. I refuse to hide my body simply because it might make a woman-phobic world more comfortable. As I sat in my doctor's office trying to order my perceptions of what had just occurred, I realized that the attitude towards prosthesis after breast cancer is an index of this society’s attitudes towards women in general as decoration and externally defined sex object.”
• 
  metempsicoso

  "I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side."
  
  Nei miei momenti di crisi, di paura o spaesamento, ho scoperto che la soluzione per me è rivolgermi agli scritti di una intellettuale nera. È un sforzo notevole di cambio di prospettiva, per un uomo bianco, ma riserva stupore, crescita e rivoluzioni. È stato così con Alice Walker, Toni Morrison e bell hooks. Oggi a questa lista - troppo breve, ma in crescita: migliorerò - si aggiunge anche Audre Lorde.
  Questa breve raccolta di saggi, conferenze e pagine di diario è intesa. Tra i vari percorsi dei miei interessi di lettura, questo volume interseca la riscoperta delle intellettuali femministe di colore con il mio bisogno di affrontare il tema della morte. È un libro-snodo, di quelli che capitano al momento giusto e ti radicano nel cervello, dando nuovi rami al tuo pensiero. [E infatti ritorno a pensarci con costanza, a distanza di mesi, mentre sento il bisogno di tornare a questa autrice e maledico la sua mancanza nel panorama editoriale italiano]
  Lo stile di Lorde, poetessa oltre che attivista femminista, è lirico e vivido, a tratti quasi faticoso: da spizzicare, soprattutto nei frammenti di diario. Perché Lorde si dà tutta, convinta che opporsi al silenzio che ammanta la malattia delle donne sia attivismo, convita che tacere significhi lasciarsi sopraffare dal cancro. Donna nera, femminista, lesbica: quando la mastectomia diventa l'unica via percorribile per fare fronte alla malattia, soffre della mancanza di un riferimento, di un modello da seguire, di qualcuno da imitare, o da cui discostarsi, ma con cui rapportarsi. Decide di esserlo lei.
  E soprattutto, in questa raccolta, si scaglia contro le protesi mammarie e i surrogati di seno che all'epoca venivano impiantati - o fatti indossare - alle malate subito dopo l'operazione chirurgica di rimozione del tumore. Non per il loro benessere - sebbene lo si spacciasse come tale - ma perché non avere un petto simmetrico veniva ritenuto dai medici e dall'opinione pubblica come non femminile (e parliamo di termini assoluti) e sconveniente.
  69 facciate. Ovviamente si parla di cancro, della disperazione e della rabbia che la diagnosi scatena. Ovviamente si parla dell'essere una donna di colore, malata, in una società capitalistica, patriarcale e bianca. Eppure c'è molto di più.
  C'è un invito a prendere parola, a vivere la vita e accettarla e celebrarla anche nel suo essere dolorosa e soffocante. C'è un invito a guardarsi allo specchio e al di là di esso: oggi parleremmo di body positivity, ma questa locuzione, vuota e abusata, mi sembra riduttiva. "The cancer journals" è un inno, un manifesto, una stretta calorosa.
  
  E, che cazzo, in Italia questo volume non è stato tradotto (a meno che non sia finito in qualche raccolta di saggi oggi fuori catalogo) e pochissimo di Lorde è disponibile sul nostro mercato - e comunque di difficile reperibilità. Cosa tristemente comune per molte altre intellettuali non bianche. Che rabbia.
  
  Se potete, recuperateli. Lorde e questo libro.
• 
  Iris Lu 🌙

  Las memorias de Lorde en este poético diario feminista son profundas e intensas. El recuento del dolor ante la pérdida del cuerpo y ante la situación social que como mujeres nos impide a hablar sobre nuestra imagen.
  
  Valiente, motivador y rebelde.
  
  “ I carry tattooed upon my heart a list of names of women who did not survive, and there is already a space left for one more, my own”
  
  
• 
  Lightreads

  Post-mastectomy reflections and journal entries from the former Poet Laureate. This is gorgeous, unsurprisingly. It's raw and pained and unapologetic about
  both. But it also bothered me on a fundamental level, which I finally identified as the same place that will never be able to align itself with traditional feminism. Lorde's story is partly about a woman who refused to settle for prosthesis after her breast was removed, who believes that women don't need to have two breasts to be beautiful, that we don't need to conform to make everyone else comfortable, and further that immediate reconstruction or replacement ducks the fundamental need for healing and acceptance after cancer and surgery. And yep, she's absolutely right, and her stories of the chilly response
  she received from her own doctor, who told her to wear a falsey because she might make the clinic look bad, really pissed me off. However, Lorde is also one of those feminists who never turned the critical eye back on herself, who never stopped to think that perhaps a false breast is important to some women. Maybe wanting to have two breasts again isn't bowing to the misogynist pressures of a domineering society, but is a simple, healthy need to reclaim part
  of a lost and damaged self. In short, she's one of those feminists who is absolutely certain that every woman should stop unquestioningly believing in the male hegemonic propaganda, and start believing in hers. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?
  
  And then again, on a more personal level, this book made me revisit my memories of my mothers battle with cancer, and of her reconstruction. And it made me wonder a little bit if the immediate recourse to a fake breast isn't part of the deep, inconsolable wound that she carries to this day. There are parts of her that have never recovered from cancer, that believe wholeheartedly that she will never be attractive again, and that wither a little more every
  time she looks down. And yeah I wonder, if her doctors and everyone hadn't automatically assumed she wanted a reconstruction the very second her breast was removed, would she have had time to heal just a little bit?
  
  
• 
  Megan O'Hara

  she is consistently constantly painfully right
• 
  Marika_reads

  „Chcę pisać gniew, ale wychodzi mi jedynie smutek” – tak rozpoczyna się jeden z codziennych zapisków Lorde, ten komentarz jednak nie pasuje do określenia całej książki, bo dla mnie owszem jest przejmująco, ale i gniewnie. Przejmująco bo tak intymne zapiski o doświadczeniu raka piersi i mastektomii przepełnia smutek. Przejmująco bo czarna wojowniczka (jak sama siebie nazywa) jest poetką i ta poetyckość jest tu widoczna co podbija emocjonalny odbiór.
  „Nadchodzi wiosna, a ja wciąż czuję rozpacz, jak bladą chmurę, która czeka, by mnie pożreć, pochłonąć jak kolejny rak, połknąć i unieruchomić, zmetabolizować mnie do postaci swoich komórek(…)”
  Gniewnie bo Lorde przeciwstawia się podejściu medycyny i nauki do raka piersi - pisze o tym, jak dużą wagę przykłada się do nagłaśniania, że raka płuc powoduje palenie papierosów, ale nie mówi się nic o ówcześnie znanych powodach rozwijania się raka piersi. Gniewnie bo Lorde krzyczy o krzywdzących stereotypach dotyczących wyglądu, powodujących, że niektóre kobiety boją się utraty piersi bardziej niż utraty życia. Pokazuje całkiem inną (jak na lata 70-te) perspektywę, mówiąc, że kobiecości nie definiuje to czy ma czy nie ma piersi, krytykuje traktowanie jako normę korzystanie z protez czy konieczność wykonania rekonstrukcji piersi po mastektomii, i cala komercyjną (!) otoczkę raka.
  Oprócz samej choroby Lorde podejmuje też
  temat dyskryminacji ze względu na swój kolor skóry, orientację seksualną czy płeć. „W każdej grupie, do której należę, definiuje się mnie jako inną”.
  „Dzienniki raka” są przejmujące i gniewne, ale ja poczułam też sporo siły do walki i życia, co na pewno dla czytelniczek zmagających się z chorobą może być niezwykle budujące.
• 
  Alaíde Ventura

  Así que esto es construir (combatir) con fuerza desde el dolor.
• 
  Sabrina

  A stunning deep dive into Lorde’s brilliant brain as she tries to come to terms with and make sense if her mastectomy in a world that begs her to wear a prosthetic because the absence of her breast dampens the morale of her surroundings. “The emphasis upon wearing a prosthesis is a way of avoiding having women come to terms with their pain and loss and thereby with their own strength”.
  
  She reckons with death, claiming: “Once I accept the existence of drying, as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?”. By sharing excerpts from her diary and her commentary on Those excerpts , she exposes the deepest, darkest periods prior and after her surgery, where the physical and mental pain, the personal and the political, intertwine and amplify each other.
  
  Lorde speaks to the necessity of transforming silence into action, by putting her out there as a “dyke who has had a mastectomy”, so that other “dykes” with mastectomies can see their experiences reflected in hers and understand why she refuses to fill out the cavern left by her diseased breast by a prosthetic that only serves to make a “woman-phobic world more comfortable.”
  
  Do yourself at least one favour in 2021: read Audre Lorde. Read her words and live by them. She’s done the thinking and the writing - all we need to do is execute them.
• 
  Chase

  Lorde's Cancer Journals are at once profound, powerful, and wrought with despair. It's clear that Lorde was moved to anger by the medical industry, in its concentration on cures and cosmetics. This short collection of essays and journal reflections points to the heart of cancer anxieties, particularly from a resonant Black Lesbian Warrior, whose work has inspired generations of activists to undergo a critical change in biomedicine. Though less image-resilient than Zami, The Cancer Journals are an important glance into the life of one of the United States' greatest poets, activists, and scholars.