Breast Cancer Narratives through Time: Establishing Illness as an Opportunity to Help Others

Undergraduate: Kaylyn Pogson

Faculty Advisor: GerShun Avilez
Department: Biology

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Breast cancer is an ancient disease about which attitudes, thought, and knowledge have evolved with time due to research and activism, though there are some qualities that remain surprisingly constant. The dynamic and static aspects of the breast cancer experience can be traced through illness narratives created by women with the disease, narratives which span centuries. This thesis argues that women with breast cancer use their illness as an opportunity to help loved ones as well as other women with the disease through their actions while living with breast cancer and their illness narratives. The examination begins with Frances Burney¿¿¿s letter about her mastectomy in 1811, complimented by Spare Hours by Dr. John Brown who performed a mastectomy during the same era. The focus then moves to the 1980s with Audre Lorde¿¿¿s The Cancer Journals and Susan Sontag¿¿¿s theory-based Illness as a Metaphor. It shifts to the 2004 graphic novel Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto, then Dr. Jennifer Ho¿¿¿s 2010 blog No F****** Pink Ribbons!, and Tig Notaro¿¿¿s 2012 comedy routine about her breast cancer diagnosis. Finally, it includes the fictional narrative from Marvel Comics¿¿¿ Thor comic books beginning in 2014, wherein a woman with breast cancer becomes Thor. As illness as an opportunity to help others was explored, the importance of agency, community, and identity to women with breast cancer emerged, as well as the tendency to create an illness narrative to aid in the healing process.