Personal Reflection – Audre Lorde

First Published in 1980, Audre Lorde’s memoir Cancer Journals follows her experience with Breast Cancer. In writing this as a journal, we see the ins and outs of her suffering, and her journalistic writing style makes the reader feel a personal connection to her process. The female body is a beautiful thing, and Breast Cancer is a sickness that threatens all of us. Throughout our lives, we are informed of the dangers of Breast Cancer and need to do scans to check for it within our bodies. The fact that this is something all women grow up with and can potentially suffer from makes this journal all more real as we read about her journey through it. All bodies are sacred, and one of the terrifying things is altering your body to prevent sickness. I’m drawn to Audre Lorde because I can relate to the fears of being a woman and the struggles of illness. It is difficult to know that you are dying and for something that may not even be your fault. Cancer is most literally defined as “a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body.” The critical aspect of this definition is the fact that it is uncontrolled. Lourde focuses her story on every aspect of this process, leaving the reader with a sense of fear, sympathy, and overall perseverance when faced with extreme adversity. 

 As Lorde writes about her one-breasted mastectomy in chapter two, the reader sympathizes with the struggles of feeling feminine in your own body.  This struggle of identity arises after removing something that society recognizes as an essential part of the feminine body. She talks about how lonely the process feels to be fighting alone because everyone around her cannot relate. She expresses a lack of ability to have anyone to turn to and led to her pondering the idea of the identity crisis that led to it. She began to question how she would tackle this adversity or if she could even tackle it all. This all ties together with her feeling concerned about her attractiveness and how her lover will perceive her. As mentioned above, the female body in all its beauty is unique as we were all created in God’s image. With such a strong sense of how we look, it is easy to assume that any change made to our appearances will be detrimental to our identity and self-esteem. 

In chapter three, Lorde discusses her strength and independence. She shows the reader this, opting out of a prosthesis after her right breast was removed. I found this incredibly powerful; even with such a drastic change to her image, she decided to show the world that she is proud of who she is and what she went through. Her courage is incredibly admirable, and I have learned so much from her struggle and strength. I admire how she would not let medicine or society determine anything about who she was. As she put it, the prosthesis would make her feel “empty,” like she was given a new body, but she wanted to keep the one she already had.