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Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life

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I have read my share of cancer memoirs, and I'm quite sure I have never encountered a woman whose reaction to the diagnosis of breast cancer --- a friend's, not even hers --- is this:

"I responded in that selfishly aggressive way that each of us has at least a touch of. I flung myself on the bed and...and commanded Jean to...have her way with me, to do what she would with me....to return me to myself by way of the erotic."

Mary Cappello, just as an FYI, is not some attention-seeker using "Called Back" to call attention to her gay status or to shock and tease. She's a noted author and professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island. She knows the value of every word.

So imagine what it was like when she got the word that she had breast cancer.

First, the attention to language.

"It's concerning," says the ultrasound technician, explaining why Cappello needs a biopsy. A few pages later, the professor weighs in: "Words...cast shadows." And later again, she'll ask: "What does breast cancer awareness really make anyone aware of?"

Well, in her case, it's mostly interior, it's about consciousness: memories of a friend who had a small lump and is now dead, considerations of the breast as a milk machine and as "a WATS line to the clitoris," free-association to Gertrude Stein's remark about roses, and, not least, a fierce attention to interior logic ("A person's cancer is new to her but not new to itself").

But not totally interior --- this is also a story about radiation ("fighting fire with fire"), told with no hurry to get to the end. That sounds odd; the book is 200 pages, it's a brisk read. What I mean --- what she means --- is that she wants to feel every moment, to live it fully, to drain it of meaning before moving on.

Mary Cappello is certainly the most literate woman to write about her illness. Before surgery, she reads Proust in the hospital; he doesn't require rapt attention. Her lover's profile reminds her of "a medieval prince."

But don't be fooled. She may be learned. She may be gay. But her emotions and thoughts seem universal --- just a lot more accessible than we're used to.

There's a terrific story about a farmstand near the New England cabin that is the country retreat for Cappello and her partner. It's adorned with American flags. The proprietor wears U.S. Marines T-shirts. Late one afternoon, he corners Cappabello and her lover. He has a question: "Was it hard to come out to your families?" And he has a reason for asking it, which I won't spoil here, except to say --- it's hard to know, really know, about other people.

About the title: "Called back" were Emily Dickinson's last words. And the words carved on her tombstone. For Mary Cappello, who is now cancer-free, they're the last words on her illness. And a very powerful title for an extraordinary book.

In "Called Back," Mary Cappello does us the favor of resisting the sappy pink-ribbon sentimentality and jaded battle metaphors of cancer lore; instead she brings a whole new language to the experience of the disease, the response, the treatment, the ongoing life of a cancer patient. Cappello is both a keen observer of the details of her own passage and a poet in her exposition of that passage. Deeply intimate and relentlessly honest, she takes us inside an experience that we all fear--not to do anything as mundane and perhaps useless as to "reassure," but to show us how it is mundane; to show where cancer intersects and overlaps with life. There is nothing of the "usual" in this account, but there is much we need to know.

"Called Back" is a georgeous book, and I don't mean just the beautiful x-ray photograph on the cover. The book aims to talk about cancer differently and succeeds. To call Cappello's language "poetic" is not quite accurate; to say she utilizes the conventions of poetry to get at what's true -- that to think about cancer differently is to think about language in a new way -- is more to the point. Although Cappello is very honest about her experience, she isn't writing "merely" about her cancer journey. She's writing about how we feel, think, love, smell, and write differently because of cancer and its aftermath. The book is for all of us -- those of us who do not have cancer, those of us who do, and those of us who will someday.
If you want to think and breathe and write, then read this book.

Regardless if you're a patient or a poet, a doctor, a nurse, a caregiver, a reader, or a loved one, Called Back asks us to look not only into our lives, but out to something much greater. It's more than a guidebook through one woman's cancer; it's an examination of the intricacies of dailiness and love--from Cappello's life and her voice, into ours. For how could we not be unchanged by a work of such grace, wit, fierce temperament, and even joy? We would be utterly lost without this book.

Sara Greenslit, author of The Blue of Her Body

I attended a reading given by the author in Philadelphia. I had no idea what a "cancer" memoir would be like. To my surprise and delight, the reading was upbeat, irreverent and even humorous at times. I was very moved by Cappello's honesty and introspection. Now, having read the book, I am so impressed by the entire package. It will make you laugh, cringe, wince, and cry. Cappello is a writer of the first rank. Excellent!

Award-winning author Mary Cappello is not only a unique poet, she's a trenchant activist--the kind of artist that makes you see something you thought you knew very well as if for the first time.

The title, "Called Back," comes from the tombstone and last words of Emily Dickinson. The book's jacket cover makes an x-ray morph into an impossibly beautiful flower of sorts. Will it bloom or whither? We cannot tell. Thus, before the reader even opens the book to read page one, she encounters the way this gifted writer thinks, feels and sees the world after hearing that she's been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Learning that you have cancer would wake up anyone but Cappello turns this "journey" in to a wake up call for her readers. Inspired by the way she frames her experience of being "called back" after her previous breast exam, we learn more about the world not only in and around her but in and around all of us. We cannot help but feel with her as she is handled in all kinds of ways--frightening, infuriating and at times with tender care.

"Called Back" is unlike any other book about "living with cancer"--there's no "cancer is a gift" message, no search for a new age, karmic cause, nor is there any romance with corporate pink ribbon "activism" toward "cancer awareness." What does cancer awareness even mean or produce?

As author Megan Sullivan says, "'Called Back' is for all of us--those of us who do not have cancer, those of us who do, and those of us who will someday."

Can you think and feel? Can you think and feel in the face of one of the most dreaded diagnoses a woman imagines? Mary Cappello can--and does--as she confronts her own diagnosis of breast cancer. And then she does something extraordinary: she takes us by the hand and brings us inside her own, personal story of her journey through surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and finally, her return to life. In her riveting book, Called Back, Mary Cappello shares with the reader her fears, her pain, her observations about life, love, and her concerns about the future. I have never read such a courageous, compelling, and riveting story. This is a book I could not put down, from the first sentence to the last. Called Back makes me think about my own life and how I spend each day. Five stars many times over...