[Please note: the author is not a medical professional and is not providing medical advice.]
Every October, alongside the grim grinning ghosts and ghouls that start to adorn houses and businesses alike to herald the coming of Halloween, we start to see bright pink in all kinds of places. Athletes wear hot pink shoes on the field or court; banners and ribbons hang in shopping malls and above busy sidewalks. People wear ribbons on their clothing, sport their pink tattoos, hang them on photos of lost loved ones. It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the pink all over is a good reminder for some, and a sad moment for others.
Worldwide, over 2 million people get diagnosed with breast cancer every year. While the majority of research focuses on women and other AFAB people, anyone with breasts can develop breast cancer. There are several different kinds that can develop at any point in life, which is why everyone should be doing self-checks regularly and visiting a healthcare professional if there is something of concern or out of place.
If you don’t have a regular care provider, there are community resources like the Pima County Health Navigators who can guide you towards care. See additional places for healthcare access on the library’s website.
Some causes are linked to genetics, but other external factors can contribute as well; you don’t have to have a family history of it to develop breast cancer. If you do have a family history, with or without a BRCA-1 or –2 genetic marker, the chances of developing breast cancer at some point in your adult life are higher, but not definite. No matter what your chances, the best path to prevention (or early action, if necessary) is regular screening, whether that’s self-checking at home or getting an annual mammogram.
Whether you are a breast cancer survivor or just an empathetic human, it’s always good to know as much as you can about it. Some people prefer to read articles and watch documentaries; others want to experience it through books. No matter what stage of the cancer journey you are on, there’s something of interest for you at the public library. Here are some books to start your understanding of how one of the most prevalent of cancers affects people from all walks of life.
Nonfiction
Whether memoir or something more universally focused, nonfiction books about breast cancer are a great way to understand not just the history of the disease, but the steps we’ve taken to fight it. Some of these titles are harder to read than others, but they’ll all offer some amount of information and understanding towards what it’s like to live with cancer, to survive it.
A brief but powerful work of memoir, The Cancer Journals is Audre Lorde’s record of her own experiences. Sometimes she goes in depth into her health and medical experiences, while other days touch on thoughts, feelings, philosophies beyond treatment. If you’d like to experience them in another form, check out The Cancer Journals Revisited, a short documentary film featuring people of all backgrounds reading her work.
While this book is a little older in science years, the combined memoir and scientific exploration can satisfy different avenues of interest in a reader. Dr. Munster, a researcher on breast cancer herself, tells the story of receiving an irregular mammogram and cancer diagnosis, on top of discovering that she possessed the BRCA gene mutation. It’s an interesting narrative from the perspective of a medical professional, who might have a very different experience when it comes to cancer treatment.
Also a little older in science years, Radical is a worthwhile read if you’re curious about breast cancer’s past. While steps have been made when it comes to prevention and treatment in the years since its publication, there’s still a great deal of useful and interesting information written in an accessible way.
Beat Breast Cancer Like A Boss
If you’d like personal stories from 30 high-profile women, this is a book worth picking up. Rogin is best known for her work with PBS Newshour, and was inspired by her own experience and that of so many others to pull together stories that are at their core so similar, and yet so incredibly different.
Fiction
Some people prefer to read novels about people experiencing traumatic life events, as a well-representative story built around a character’s illness might prove more compelling, while also providing approachable information.
This absurd book isn’t so much about breast cancer as much as it features cancer, and that might be a necessary element for some readers. The narrator has both found out her husband is cheating on her and been diagnosed with breast cancer in a short amount of time. This is her exploration of life as she knows it being completely imploded by both illness and divorce.
A poetry professor enduring a midlife crisis and a breast cancer diagnosis goes on a bit of a bender in this book, in which life and mortality are considered and the main character does not make good choices. In a flip from Maggie, it’s the protagonist who ends up entering an affair with a much younger student, darn the consequences.
If you want something a little lighter, Just Playing House is a reunited-friends-to-lovers second-chance romance novel featuring a young woman who has decided to have a pre-emptive double mastectomy due to her family history and positive testing for the BRCA gene. When she’s recruited to be a stylist for Hollywood’s next big star, even his status as an old high school friend won’t make her put off her surgery. Instead of balking, he offers to help with her recovery, even to the point of moving in with her.
Articles
If you'd rather read about some of the most recent advances in breast cancer research, you can read up on publications in Academic OneFile, where you can read articles at more of a lay-level on the “Magazines” tab, or you can switch over to the “Academic Journals” tab to read the super scientific stuff.
What will you do this October to make yourself and others aware of the harm breast cancer causes people in the US and abroad?
