Highlighting these truths is the greatest contribution of Boyer’s book, and she does so without being didactic or producing a screed. If a patient doesn’t have someone available in one of those socially determined categories, she (or he) may end up with no caregiver at all. Relatedly, only spouses, parents, and children count as legal caregivers in the United States and are afforded protections for taking time off work. And, because of insufficient workplace protections, she was back at work just 10 days later. The insurance industry prioritizes profits over healing in all cases - Boyer’s double mastectomy was an outpatient procedure, and she was forced to go home when she was in too much pain to walk and too drugged to think. “These women’s deaths are racist and unnecessary, and our grief over them should tear open the earth.” In general, black women have a lower rate of breast cancer diagnosis and a higher rate of mortality. Black women are overrepresented in triple-negative cases, yet it has no targeted treatment. Women of color and women not in married, heterosexual relationships suffer disproportionately from the disease. The other reality of breast cancer that Boyer exposes is its racial and socioeconomic disparities. How would they learn without hearing a blisteringly honest account such as this? These complexities are downright refreshing for breast cancer patients and survivors to see articulated on the page, but they’re illuminating for non-sufferers, as well, whose good intentions of sending books about cancer patients and endless treatment advice ring hollow and tone deaf. The expectations that women should be stylish while bald, be joyful as our breasts are removed, and be confident when every symbol of femininity is destroyed are the persistent and damaging lies foisted upon patients by a society that won’t allow suffering yet will criticize women for not playing by unwritten rules. You comply out of a fear of disappointing others, a fear of being seen as deserving of your suffering…a fear that you will be blamed for your own dying.” One of the lessons this book shares is the fact that “breast cancer” is an oversimplification for many types of breast cancers, a reality unknown to most people until one is sucked into the maw of this disease and its trappings.īoyer’s is the most frightening kind of all - the one without a targeted treatment, the most aggressive, and the type about which those of us diagnosed with a hormone-positive variety say, “At least I don’t have…” She acknowledges all of this and proceeds to bring the reader through the strange world of a lifestyle dominated by cancer and the devastating ferocity of treatment - in particular, chemotherapy.Īs she explains, “There is a choice, of course, and you make it, but the choice never really feels like yours. The Undying isn’t a strictly linear memoir, but it does begin with the author’s diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer in 2014 when she’s only 41 years old. On the other hand, the honesty and accuracy of her book in capturing the disorientation of breast cancer and its treatment deserves to be heard at the zenith of pinkwashing.īoyer’s account is not a typical survivor story in many ways, it even eschews the label of “survivor.” Instead, it’s a sprawling examination of the personal suffering, public mythology, and persistent societal failings surrounding the treatment of breast cancer and those who endure it. There is a sardonic irony in Anne Boyer’s The Undying being published so close to October, also known as Breast Cancer Awareness Month, since she skewers the inadequacy and hypocrisy of this once-well-intentioned marketing ploy.
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