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A Literary Analysis Of The Cancer Journals By Audre Lorde

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“The Cancer Journals” Literary Analysis
Audre Lorde’s “The Cancer Journals” depicts her struggle to find her identity after her experience with breast cancer-a life altering event. Through Audre Lorde’s own experiences with adapting to a new lifestyle, she emphasizes a strong theme of the importance of finding oneself and the need for a true identity in life. She effectively describes her struggle with cancer and identity primarily through imagery, and diction to create a personalized style.
Throughout the novel, Lorde presents a changed perspective due to her breast cancer and mastectomy. In the journal entries shown before her mastectomy, she exposes her self-doubt and fear: “I can never accept this, like I can’t accept that turning my life …show more content…

Her writing is a reflection of herself: open, organised, and expressive. Though it may not seem so, the novel is very organized and detailed so that the reader may gather the gravity of each situation. Lorde inserts a variety of different essays, poems, speeches, and narratives to give the reader a complete image of the situation. One of the speeches introduced in the beginning of the book was taken from her experience at the Lesbian Literature Panel of the MLA in 1977. This covers the entirety of chapter 1, discluding the introduction. This speech, called “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” starts with a dedication to Winnie Mandela who was an exiled South African freedom fighter. The poem dedicated to her is called “A Song for Many Movements” which pays homage to the “black school children who were singing freedom songs, and who were charged for public violence… “(Lorde, 18). Then, in chapter 2, she transitions back to journals and narration. The narration elaborates the situation and explains the logic behind what her journals entailed; therefore giving the reader a complete picture. So, the formatting of this book is unique because the author puts her personality into the style, making it her own. Obviously, the organization contributes to the main theme because her identity is woven into the written words, as well as the way they’re

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