Audre Lorde, The cancer journals

TW / contenuto delicato

Uno di quei libri che andrebbero assolutamente tradotti. Personalmente sono molto toccata dal tema, avendo avuto una madre colpita dallo stesso male e dalle stesse problematiche.

(Anastasia)

Dall’introduzione

“(…) There is a commonality of isolation and painful reassessment which is shared by all women with breast cancer, whether this commonality is recognized or not. It is not my intention to judge the woman who has chosen the path of prosthesis, of silence and invisibility, the woman who wishes to be ‘the same as before.’ She has survived on another kind of courage, and she is not alone. Each of us struggles daily with the pressures of conformity and the loneliness of difference from which those choices seem to offer escape. I only know that those choices do not work for me, nor for other women who, not without fear, have survived cancer by scrutinizing its meaning within our lives, and by attempting to integrate this crisis into useful strengths for change.”

Dal capitolo III

“(…) This emphasis upon the cosmetic after surgery reinforces this society’s stereotype of women, that we are only what we look or appear, so this is the only aspect of our existence we need to address. Any woman who has had a breast removed because of cancer knows she does not feel the same. But we are allowed no psychic time or space to examine what our true feelings are, to make them our own. With quick cosmetic reassurance, we are told that our feelings are not important, our appearance is all, the sum total of self (…) 

Audre Lorde, The cancer journals, Ed. Penguin

Audre Lorde, The cancer journals, Ed. Penguin