The Cancer Journals

“Each woman responds to the crisis that breast cancer brings to her life out of a whole pattern, which is the design of who she is and how her life has been lived.” (Introduction, Page 11)

Lorde describes how a person’s response to the singular event of breast cancer is part of the coping skills they have developed throughout their lives. The response is also related to one’s self-image, which can be disrupted by the illness.

“May these words serve as encouragement for other women to speak and to act of our experiences with cancer and with other threats of death, for silence has never brought us anything of worth.”

Lorde explains her purpose for writing The Cancer Journals, which is to offer other women the language and motivation to tell similar stories about suffering illness and being confronted with death. She acknowledges how silence has marginalized women and given them less agency in narrating their own stories.

“Each of us struggles daily with the pressures of conformity and the loneliness of difference from which those choices seem to offer escape.”

Lorde seeks to understand why those who get mastectomies choose to get reconstructive surgery. Instead of judging, she acknowledges that a woman who chooses to get prosthesis is merely trying to adjust herself to cultural standards of femininity. She wants to feel attractive and to know that her appearance gives her some social value.