WR 120: (In)visible Scars: Writing About Illness explores a range of nonfiction texts (memoir, manifesto, and more) in which authors grapple with the challenge of finding the words to express the experience of mental and physical illness. Students examine how writers\u2019 choices communicate different perspectives on sickness and health, as well as consider how writing itself may serve as a vehicle for recovery. In our second module, we focus specifically on breast cancer narratives, using Susan Sontag\u2019s Illness as Metaphor as a foundational text. Karishma Sivakumar\u2019s essay contrasting Sontag\u2019s argument surrounding use of the \u201cwar metaphor\u201d in cancer discourse with Audre Lorde\u2019s The Cancer Journals is a masterclass on how to put a range of sources \u201cin conversation\u201d with one another. Her ability to acknowledge and respond to vastly different viewpoints resulted in a thoughtful analysis of how Lorde employs the war metaphor to empower breast cancer \u201cwarriors\u201d and protest against sexist societal attitudes regarding the bodies of post-mastectomy women. Although Karishma\u2019s initial draft of this essay was already strong, she embraced the revision process as an opportunity to craft a final version that was even more nuanced. I particularly admire that she didn\u2019t shy away from tackling counterarguments and instead pushed herself to dig in where she could anticipate possible objections, seeking out precise evidence to support her ideas. Likewise, my favorite aspect of this essay is that there are multiple points where Karishma lingered on her discussion of a particular idea, deepening her analysis by incorporating examples of Lorde\u2019s rhetorical choices rather than moving on quickly to a new subject. Her efforts produced an astute, insightful, and thought-provoking reading of Lorde\u2019s narrative. Bravo, Karishma!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In composing this piece, I was inspired by the struggles Audre Lorde voiced in her narrative, <\/span>The Cancer Journals<\/span><\/i>. I aimed to create a conversation between Lorde\u2019s personal experience with breast cancer, laid bare in her work, and prominent concepts in current breast cancer discourse, detailed in two other sources. Drawing comparisons and contrasts between these three sources, I gained an understanding of how Lorde\u2019s distinction between two enemies in relaying her breast cancer journey strengthened her goal to motivate breast cancer survivors and post-mastectomy women to break their silence and take action against cancer propagators\u2013\u2013both overt and covert. Drafting the essay, I initially struggled to design an introductory paragraph that condensed my significance and claim while still preserving all the nuances of my argument. While revising, however, I allowed myself to break free of that standard five-paragraph mold and split the introductory paragraph in two to better construct the \u2018why\u2019 behind my argument and reflect on my original significance. Later on, in my conclusion, I decided then to further expand upon the significance of Lorde\u2019s rhetorical choices, discussing the implications for the genre of writing about illness as a whole. The project was challenging as I had never envisioned a dialogue between this many works before but also incredibly rewarding. I am deeply appreciative of the precious insight that I gained into the lives of those facing breast cancer through this project and through activist Audre Lorde.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In her book <\/span>Illness as Metaphor<\/span><\/i>, Susan Sontag, a critical essayist\/novelist best known for her analysis of modern culture, asserts that cancer has been \u201cencumbered by the trappings of metaphor\u201d and the most \u201ccontrolling metaphors in descriptions of cancer are\u2026drawn\u2026from the language of warfare\u201d (5, 64). She believes these war metaphors should be withdrawn from cancer discourse because they negatively impact the psyche and self-image of cancer patients. Contrastingly, in respect to Audre Lorde\u2019s narrative, <\/span>The Cancer Journals<\/span><\/i>, Lorde\u2013\u2013a Black lesbian poet diagnosed with breast cancer\u2013\u2013frequently embraces this war metaphor to discover resilience as she refers to fighting an \u201cenemy within\u201d and an \u201cenemy outside\u201d (10). Sontag\u2019s discussion of the internal harm stemming from the war metaphor\u2019s adoption diverges, however, from Lorde\u2019s uplifting usage of the metaphor in that Lorde states her fight is \u201cthe war against despair\u201d within herself as opposed to simply a war against cancer. Regarding the external war that Lorde fights, Lorde resolves to \u201c[transform her] silence into language and action\u201d against the \u201cstructures within our lives that support the Cancer Establishment,\u201d mirroring the \u201crhetoric of protest\u201d that Kristen Garrison, a scholar of rhetoric and disability studies, establishes as a narrator\u2019s redirection of anger from cancer to a \u201cmore culpable enemy\u201d in her article \u201cThe Personal is Rhetorical: War, Protest, and Peace in Breast Cancer Narratives\u201d (14, 51, 14).<\/span><\/p>\n Subsequently, the distinction that Lorde makes between her two enemies yields two mutually reinforcing rhetorical impacts. First, she enhances her relatability with her readers by detailing her inner despair\u2013\u2013a feeling even those without breast cancer can understand\u2013\u2013and presenting moments when she felt condemned by prosthesis promoters. Second, she models how to defy silence in spite of fear by disclosing how she personally surmounted her fear and leveraged her anger. Fundamentally, both of these impacts coincide to strengthen her stated purpose of encouraging women who have faced breast cancer to take action against the \u201cCancer Establishment.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout her narrative, Lorde continuously refers to despair as an enemy that she is battling within herself such as when she affirms, \u201cFaith is…the name of the war against despair, the battle I fight daily\u201d and when she asks, “[H]ow do I fight the despair\u2026which is my greatest internal enemy?\u201d (5, 10). By perceiving despair as the enemy that she’s facing inside rather than her cancer, Lorde notably deviates from the demoralizing usage of the war metaphor that Sontag describes in her article. For instance, Sontag attests:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Punitive notions of disease\u2026are particularly active with cancer. There is the \u2018fight\u2019 or \u2018crusade\u2019 against cancer; cancer is the \u2018killer\u2019 disease; people who have cancer are \u2018cancer victims.\u2019 Ostensibly, the illness is the culprit. But it is also the cancer patient who is made culpable. Widely believed psychological theories of disease assign to the luckless ill the ultimate responsibility both for falling ill and for getting well. And conventions of treating cancer as no mere disease but a demonic enemy make cancer not just a lethal disease but a shameful one (57).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Expanding upon specific examples in which the war metaphor induces negative emotions such as guilt, stress, and shame in cancer patients, Sontag builds a firm case against this language. <\/span>However, Lorde displays more explicit antagonism towards the <\/span>despair <\/span><\/i>that grew from her diagnosis and mastectomy than towards the disease of cancer itself. Indeed, differentiating between despair and cancer helps Lorde find hope and strength in her recovery since despair, in her view, is a manageable enemy that can be pragmatically overcome by \u201cthe real power of healing love\u201d (32). Cancer, on the other hand, is not as feasible an enemy to beat, considering it has no definitive remedy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Supplementing her unique adaptation of the war metaphor, Lorde engages similes and refers to life experiences emotionally analogous to her mastectomy to promote her readers\u2019 understanding of her despair. As an example, in her journal entries following her mastectomy, she writes, \u201cSometimes despair sweeps across my consciousness like luna winds across a barren moonscape\u201d and \u201cI feel despair like a pale cloud waiting to consume me\u2026swallow me into immobility\u2026I need to remind myself of the joy, the lightness, the laughter so vital to my living and my health\u201d (3, 4). These vivid comparisons that Lorde crafts for her despair\u2014\u201cluna winds\u201d and a \u201cpale cloud\u201d\u2014illustrate how lonely, pained, and paralyzed she is in her sadness as well as her dire need for happiness, thereby helping her readers envision the effects of despair on her spirit. While those without cancer can never truly comprehend the physical pain and symptoms of the disease, the emotional impact of cancer is one that Lorde can attempt to communicate through her writing. Additionally, she remarks how a conversation with a friend provided her with insight into her emotions after her mastectomy: \u201c[F]or six months after her mother died, she [Lorde\u2019s friend] felt she couldn\u2019t think or remember, and I was struck by the similarity of the sensations\u201d (33). By referencing the death of one\u2019s mother, a broad life event that has a comparable psychological impact to her mastectomy, she advances her relatability with her readers. She allows those without experience with breast cancer to gain a gateway into understanding her internal enemy\u2013\u2013despair\u2013\u2013and the amnesia-like mental shutdown associated with the disease\u2019s treatment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While Lorde consistently establishes despair to be her \u201cenemy within,\u201d some, nevertheless, may still argue that there are moments when Lorde contradicts herself and implicitly invokes the war metaphor in a manner that depicts cancer as the enemy just like Sontag characterizes. For example, Lorde recounts, \u201c[A]s I waited almost four weeks for my first biopsy, I had grown angry at my right breast because I felt as if it had in some unexpected way betrayed me, as if it\u2026had turned against me by creating this tumor which might be malignant\u201d (26). Seemingly, she assigns blame to herself and to her body for falling sick\u2013\u2013echoing Sontag\u2019s previous remark that cancer patients who accept the war metaphor often feel \u201cculpable\u201d and internalize many negative emotions. Even so, while Lorde does develop negative emotions such as anger in applying the war metaphor, her mindset towards her traitorous breast and cancer as her inner enemy eventually evolves, prompting her anger to disappear. Lorde conveys this shift in thinking best when she reveals, \u201cBut on the day before my mastectomy I wrote in my journal\u2026The anger that I felt for my right breast last year has faded, and I\u2019m glad because I have had this extra year\u2026This year between was like a hiatus, an interregnum in a battle within which I could so easily be a casualty, since I certainly was a warrior\u201d (26-27). In calling herself a \u201cwarrior\u201d and rejecting the idea of being solely a \u201ccasualty\u201d of cancer, Lorde discloses yet another instance when she elicits the war metaphor in a positive way to cultivate strength, contrasting Sontag\u2019s harmful view of the metaphor.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, Lorde\u2019s anger does not simply vanish. At the start of her narrative\u2019s introduction, she professes, \u201cI am a post-mastectomy woman who believes our feelings need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and of use. I do not wish my anger and pain and fear about cancer to fossilize into yet another silence\u201d (1). Further, at the introduction\u2019s end, she expresses how she wishes to use these negative emotions to achieve her goals: \u201cI have found that battling despair does not mean\u2026ignoring the strength and barbarity of the forces aligned against us\u2026It means, for me, recognizing the enemy outside and the enemy within, and knowing that my work is part of a continuum of women\u2019s work, of reclaiming this earth and our power\u201d (10). Lorde realizes that her anger and her war against despair\u2013\u2013her \u201cenemy within\u201d\u2013\u2013can be channeled into efforts of generating change against the \u201cbarbarity of the forces\u201d (her external enemies) that endanger her and others like her. This refocusing of her anger reflects Garrison\u2019s analysis of the \u201crhetoric of protest.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Coined by Garrison in her article, the \u201crhetoric of protest\u201d is showcased across Lorde\u2019s narrative. Garrison defines the \u201crhetoric of protest\u201d in the context of an essay written by Barbara Ehrenreich, another breast cancer survivor. She delineates how Ehrenreich \u201c[follows] the script\u201d of the war metaphor and \u201cyet [diverges]\u201d (Garrison 13). While Ehrenreich does see the value in the war metaphor, she eventually \u201credirects\u201d her anger from cancer to \u201cthe corporate interests [that] pollute the environment\u201d because, to her, these entities are a \u201cmore culpable enemy\u201d (Garrison 13-14). Similar to Garrison\u2019s description of Ehrenreich, Lorde also only partially \u201cfollows the script\u201d of the war metaphor described by Sontag because her mentality shifts from funneling her anger towards herself to finding the power in her anger to combat an exterior, \u201cmore culpable enemy.\u201d Although, who exactly is Lorde\u2019s \u201cenemy outside\u201d? According to Garrison, Ehrenreich\u2019s war was against \u201ccorporate interests.\u201d Is the war the same for Lorde? As a matter of fact, there is a similarity. In her protest, Lorde declares, \u201cI have been to war, and still am. So has every woman who had had one or both breasts amputated because of the cancer…I may be a casualty in a cosmic war against radiation, animal fat, air pollution, McDonald\u2019s hamburgers and Red Dye No. 2, but the fight is still going on, and I am still a part of it\u201d (53). Lorde, like Ehrenreich, thus addresses pollution and corporations such as McDonald’s while also emphasizing many other environmental contributors of cancer as parts of what she later terms the \u201cCancer Establishment\u201d (51).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Moreover, Lorde exhibits her rationale for her protest against the \u201cCancer Establishment\u201d\u2013\u2013for refusing to stay silent when confronted with fear\u2013\u2013when she contends all women who experienced cancer have fears that keep them silent, but \u201cwe still will be no less afraid\u201d if \u201c[w]e..sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, [and] while our earth is poisoned\u201d (14-15). In highlighting how breast cancer survivors\u2019 fears engender silence that is both ineffective in diminishing their fears and worthless in the fight to save people\u2019s lives from the \u201cpoison\u201d of the \u201cCancer Establishment,\u201d Lorde accentuates her call to action. Many women with cancer are afraid to voice their struggles. They are afraid that they will be judged for their opinions in regards to their bodies because of the pervasive, patriarchal societal view of a woman’s beauty as paramount to their identity and success. However, unlike these women, Lorde is willing to push past her fears and be vocal about her emotions. She wishes her \u201cwords to serve as encouragement for other women to speak and to act out of [their] experiences with cancer\u201d in order to quell the threat of the \u201cCancer Establishment\u201d (2). To that end, Lorde candidly shares her own fear and reflects upon how she has overcome it by reorienting both it and her anger towards taking action: \u201cI am often afraid to this day, but even more so angry at having to be afraid\u2026I find\u2026[that I should not] turn away from fear, but [use it] as fuel to help me along the way… If I can remember to make the jump from impotence to action, then working uses the fear as it drains it off, and I find myself furiously empowered\u201d (46-47). In divulging her personal experience with fear, she inspires other women with cancer to emulate her, overcome their own fears, and break their silence in opposition to the \u201cCancer Establishment.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n In addition to directing her anger at the \u201cCancer Establishment\u201d itself, Lorde also specifically targets post-mastectomy prosthesis promoters who discreetly support it. She believes that their \u201cemphasis upon wearing a prosthesis is a way of avoiding having women come to terms with their own pain and loss, and thereby, with their own strength,\u201d and that prostheses impede women from \u201c[challenging] those structures\u2026that support the Cancer Establishment\u201d (41, 51). Subsequently, in her protest, Lorde utilizes rhetorical questions to substantiate the detrimental effects of prostheses in preventing post-mastectomy women from recognizing and building their own strength. For example, she attests, \u201cwhat would happen if an army of one-breasted women descended upon Congress and demanded that the use of carcinogenic, fat-stored hormones in beef-feed be outlawed?\u201d and \u201cwhy hasn\u2019t the American Cancer Society publicized the connections between animal fat and breast cancer for our daughters the way it has publicized the connection between cigarette smoke and lung cancer?\u201d (9, 51). By impassionately posing these questions to her readers, she underscores both the power that unsilenced post-mastectomy women can have in combating carcinogen propagators as well as the lack of power they can have in carcinogen-related research media resulting from the silencing of their voices. She demonstrates the persuasive force that post-mastectomy women can become if they unapologetically expose and vocalize their hardships.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Furthermore, Lorde\u2019s protest of prosthesis resembles Garrison\u2019s commentary on Ehrenreich\u2019s \u201crhetoric of protest.\u201d In her essay, Ehrenreich \u201ccriticizes \u2018the mainstream of breast cancer culture\u2019 for its lack of anger\u201d (Garrison 87). Similarly, Lorde criticizes \u2018breast cancer culture\u2019 for its \u201clack of anger\u201d towards prosthesis supporters in particular. Displaying her reasoning behind this criticism, Lorde integrates personal moments in her narrative when she felt angry at advocates for prosthesis. One such moment is when Lorde relays her feelings following a hospital visit from a woman with the American Cancer Society\u2019s Reach for Recovery Program two days after her mastectomy: \u201c[E]very attempt I made to examine or question the possibility of a real integration of this experience into the totality of my life and my loving and my work, was ignored by this woman…I felt outraged and insulted\u201d (49). After her surgery, Lorde tries to let go of her pre-mastectomy life and accept her new reality as well as any possible insight that comes with that. Nonetheless, the Reach for Recovery woman does not even grant her that respect. She does not allow her that time to heal and potentially embrace her changed body and life, inciting Lorde\u2019s anger towards her and other breast prosthesis advocates like her. Another instance when Lorde airs her anger is when she narrates a conversation she had following her mastectomy with a nurse at her doctor\u2019s office who tells her she\u2019s hurting the \u201cmorale of the office\u201d by not wearing a prosthesis (52). Lorde details her reaction, stating, \u201cI 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 claim my own body\u201d (52). Once more, a supporter of prostheses\u2013\u2013a medical professional who is reputedly supposed to refrain from dictating a patient\u2019s private decisions\u2013\u2013angers Lorde to the degree to which she feels \u201cassaulted.\u201d Markedly, this nurse induces Lorde to invoke the language of the war metaphor. Except, this time, it is neither the \u201cCancer Establishment\u201d nor even her despair that Lorde feels is her enemy here; instead, it is her nurse\u2013\u2013one of the very people who is meant to be her greatest ally. As a result, the war metaphor contributes to Lorde\u2019s gain in strength by helping her perceive her anger, which she later siphons into silence-breaking action. By establishing her personal reasons for her criticism and anger towards prosthesis promoters, Lorde also enriches her relatability with women like her who have experienced cancer. These women can potentially discern a connection between Lorde\u2019s experiences and sentiments with prostheses and their own, allowing them to view Lorde as a model for them to respect and follow. Accordingly, she rouses these women to voice the moments when they similarly felt attacked, to express their anger, and to transform their emotions into action. In essence, Lorde bolsters her purpose to rally others like her to join the fight against their common external enemy, the \u201cCancer Establishment\u201d and its supporters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lorde thus identifies both despair and the \u201cCancer Establishment\u201d along with its supporters, respectively, as her enemy inside and outside throughout <\/span>The Cancer Journals. <\/span><\/i>In finding the strength to battle these enemies, Lorde embraces the war metaphor\u2013\u2013which Sontag characterizes as threatening to a breast cancer patient\u2019s spirit\u2013\u2013in an upbeat manner. While there are times when Lorde adopts the war metaphor in the unhealthy way that Sontag describes, developing negative emotions such as anger, her mindset regarding cancer as her inner enemy eventually grows, inducing her anger to vanish. In respect to conveying her \u201cwar against despair,\u201d she employs figurative language and refers to life experiences comparable to her mastectomy to increase her readers\u2019 understanding of her despair. In terms of Lorde\u2019s war against the \u201cCancer Establishment,\u201d she emulates Garrison\u2019s description of the \u201crhetoric of protest\u201d by channeling her anger towards efforts to oppose the Establishment and its covert supporters. Lorde best exemplifies this rhetoric when she reveals how she overcame her fear to reject silence, and recounts moments in her life when she felt ill-treated by advocates of prostheses. Incorporating these moments, she helps uplift women like her by relating that they are not alone in their anger and experiences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In turn, both the war metaphor and the rhetoric of protest produce heartening effects. While Lorde invokes the war metaphor to energize herself, she elicits the rhetoric of protest to inspire her readers like her to act. Consequently, Lorde\u2019s solicitation of these prominent concepts in cancer discourse proves to be an effective rhetorical strategy in confronting her two enemies. They advance her relatability on an emotional level and help her model to her readers how to defy silence in spite of fear, strengthening her purpose of motivating women with breast cancer to break their silence and take action against the \u201cCancer Establishment.\u201d In achieving this purpose, it is worth noting that Lorde recognizes if more of these women can overcome their fears to present their stories, then they will become advocates not just for themselves but for everyone who is affected by the Establishment\u2019s proliferation of carcinogens. She also recognizes the radical nature of her entreaty in that narrators in the genre of writing about cancer do not all call upon their readers to act against an entity as intimidating as the \u201cCancer Establishment.\u201d As a result, when Lorde does so, she acknowledges the adversity associated with speaking out and diligently works to bolster her readers\u2019 sense of self-efficacy. Ultimately, the distinction that Lorde constructs between her two enemies influences her genre at large by shedding light upon the trailblazing power that breast cancer survivors and post-mastectomy women possess.<\/span><\/p>\n Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n Garrison, Kristen. \u201cThe Personal Is Rhetorical: War, Protest, and Peace in Breast Cancer Narratives.\u201d <\/span>Disability Studies Quarterly<\/span><\/i>, vol. 27, no. 4, Sept. 2007,\u00a0<\/span>doi:10.18061\/dsq.v27i4.52.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Lorde, Audre, and Tracy K. Smith. <\/span>The Cancer Journals<\/span><\/i>. Penguin Books, 2020. <\/span><\/p>\n Sontag, Susan. <\/span>Illness as Metaphor<\/span><\/i>. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988.<\/span><\/p>\n Karishma Sivakumar<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0is a first-year student studying Neuroscience within the College of Arts & Sciences at Boston University, with specific interests in medicine and public health. Her fascination with the dynamics between patients and healthcare professionals first evolved from assisting her mother at her medical practice back home in Arizona. Believing in the invaluable impact of compassionate communication on patients\u2019 well-being, she promotes the usage of uplifting language in present illness discourse. She recognizes its profound ability to empower individuals navigating through illness and also those apprehensive to vocalize and transform their hardships into silence-breaking activism. Karishma is grateful to her WR 120 professor, Arielle Kaplan, who, through her unwavering support, has bolstered her confidence in her writing and encouraged her to embrace and experiment with new creative choices.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Karishma Sivakumar Instructor’s Introduction WR 120: (In)visible Scars: Writing About Illness explores a range of nonfiction texts (memoir, manifesto, and more) in which authors grapple with the challenge of finding the words to express the experience of mental and physical illness. Students examine how writers\u2019 choices communicate different perspectives on sickness and health, as well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23572,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23572"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":880,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions\/880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Arielle Kaplan<\/h6>\n
\nFrom the Writer<\/h4>\n
\nThe Dichotomy Between the Enemy Inside and Outside: Audre Lorde’s Heartening Adaptation of the War Metaphor and Rhetoric of Protest in\u00a0The Cancer Journals<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n
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