The Cancer Journals

Lorde discusses how women respond to the personal crisis of breast cancer. Some women, she notes, try to hide how they truly feel, pretending that the illness has not disrupted their routines. Others, whom she likens to warriors, find a weapon at their disposal. Lorde identifies herself as “a post-mastectomy woman” who believes that her feelings and those of others who have endured her experience “need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and of use” (11).

Lorde tries to express some of her “feelings and thoughts about the travesty of prosthesis, the pain of amputation, the function of cancer in a profit economy, [her] confrontation with mortality, the strength of women loving, and the power and rewards of self-conscious living” (11). She recognizes, however, that the experiences of breast cancer and mastectomy are common in the United States. Though she criticizes the uses of prostheses, she does not want to judge women who have chosen to wear them. She simply wishes to clarify why that choice doesn’t work for some other women.

Lorde has integrated several journal entries into the text, all of which were written six months after her “modified radical mastectomy for breast cancer” and continue beyond her completion of the essays that make up The Cancer Journals.