Looks at the ways that literary artists have responded to women's cancer through poetry, drama, fiction, autobiography, and environmental writing

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Copyright © 2005, University of Michigan. All rights reserved. Posted December 2005 and January 2006.

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Description

Women have been writing about cancer for decades, but since the early 1990s, the body of literature on cancer has increased exponentially as growing numbers of women face the searing realities of the disease and give testimony to its ravages and revelations.

Fractured Borders: Reading Women's Cancer Literature surveys a wide range of contemporary writing about breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer, including works by Marilyn Hacker, Margaret Edson, Carole Maso, Audre Lorde, Eve Sedgwick, Mahasweta Devi, Lucille Clifton, Alicia Ostriker, Jayne Anne Phillips, Terry Tempest Williams, and Jeanette Winterson, among many others. DeShazer's readings bring insights from body theory, performance theory, feminist literary criticism, French feminisms, and disability studies to bear on these works, shining new light on a literary subject that is engaging more and more writers.

"An important and useful book that will appeal to people in a variety of fields and walks of life, including scholars, teachers, and anyone interested in this subject."
--Suzanne Poirier, University of Illinois at Chicago

"A book on a timely and important topic, wisely written beyond scholarly boundaries and crossing many theoretical and disciplinary lines."
--Patricia Moran, University of California, Davis

Mary DeShazer is Professor of Women's Studies and English, Wake Forest University. She is editor of The Longman Anthology of Women's Literature and author of A Poetics of Resistance: Women Writing in El Salvador, South Africa, and the United States and Inspiring Women: Reimagining the Muse.