Amazon.com Review
When Cancer in Two Voices was first published in 1991, one out of every nine women in the U.S was at risk of developing breast cancer. Now, as the second edition of this popular book is released, we learn that the odds of getting breast cancer have increased to one in eight. When her advanced breast cancer was diagnosed in 1985, Barbara Rosenblum realized that she was "only the first" among her friends to get sick. Rosenblum and her lesbian partner, Sandra Butler, resolved to make the most of their remaining years together. One of the things they did was write this book. Butler and Rosenblum's separate diary entries describe the social and emotional, as well as the physical, effects of breast cancer on their lives. This edition includes a new introduction by Butler, in which she writes about finding hope in the midst of this epidemic.
From Publishers Weekly
Shifting back and forth between pk the late Rosenblum's and her surviving lover Butler's journal entries and letters, this landmark feminist perspective on breast cancer describes how Rosenblum's malignant cancer was misdiagnosed as benign fibrocystic disease. Even after a correct diagnosis results in a mastectomy and intensive radiation and chemotherapy, the cancer runs rampant through her body. The work is an indictment of the medical profession's casual attitude to women's illness, and also a touching chronicle of two women in their forties grappling intellectually and emotionally with premature death. No detail is spared to describe the appalling effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. But each moment of joy is relished, and Rosenblum notes with black humor how she squeezed out her "foam rubber tit" after swimming. The shared but contrasting Jewishness of Rosenblum, daughter of Holocaust survivors, and Butler, daughter of suburban assimilationists, adds poignancy, as does the image of Butler ( Conspiracy of Silence ) scattering her lover's ashes in her garden. Author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
