Breast cancer can be a very scary experience, not just for the patient, but also for the patient’s family. While patients go through the process of being diagnosed with breast cancer and the treatment that goes with it there are many highs and lows. The themes of uncertainty, family, and isolation can be seen throughout Audre Lorde’s journal, and even though the poems are small you can still see the same themes throughout most of them. When reading through Audre’s experience of having to wait three weeks to figure out if she had cancer or not, the first time, she was struggling with the uncertainty of her life. Her mortality was put front and center and she had a lot of self-reflection during this time. In The Sick Wife by Jane Kenyon you can see an example of how uncertain life is and how quickly it can change. In The Sick Wife there was a wife who is not even fifty, yet they are not able to button a button. Even when diagnosed with cancer it is not just life and death that people are uncertain of, but also the quality of life after cancer. While Audre is at the hospital after her second biopsy and when she is finally out of anesthesia she says that her partner, Frances, was “like a great sun-flower.” I think this perfectly sums up how family or loved ones can have such a positive effect on individuals’’ health. Loved ones can be a stress reliever and simply having them there can make individuals happier and more at ease. However; in some families, it may have the
This generation of women, may it be young or old, are fortunate to live in a country where you can be anything, do anything, and say anything that men can. Although in theory the playing fields are still not completely even, we as a nation have made some substantial progress in women’s rights. Just a few hundred years ago, women livered mundane lives and rarely got to speak up for themselves. In the book, The Midwife’s Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, it follows the life of Martha Ballard through the use of her own diary. Martha Ballard captures the lives of common women in the Early Republic Era by providing an authentic record of the role women played in their communities throughout the developmental years of the United States.
Through Women’s Eyes by Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil addresses American History from 1865 until present day. The third edition of this textbook includes visual and primary sources over several centuries. I used this textbook in a history course, “Women in the United States, 1890 – Present;” I found the textbook to be engaging, helpful, and useful throughout the course. The way in which in the information was presented allowed me to learn, assess, and analyze the difficulties women faced.
Roger Ebert once said "Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you." In the short story "The Wife 's Story" Ursula K. Le Guin creates the mood of suspense by using foreshadowing and other literary devices. Suspense is a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen. The entire story is filled with the state of feeling of uncertainty as the wife solely alludes to the major event. It is also obscured in mystery.
Williams' work contains constant narratives of her own personal struggle against breast cancer and its effects on those dear to her, enveloping readers emotionally while, through abrupt statements, simultaneously redirecting them towards future solutions. Her account commences immediately with a declaration of the author's horrific family history: "I belong to a Clan of One-breasted
He told me a story of a friend he had who had cancer and she made the choice to stop the chemotherapy. Her arms had scabs and she decided enough was enough. She knew she wasn’t going to get better. She talked about death as if she were going to a party. He described how she appeared to be at peace because she lived a fulfilling life. Mr. E felt that she encouraged and motivated him more than he to her.Mr. E felt that the greatest joys of getting older were family and seeing it grow. He also felt that being loved and having others think highly of you were great achievements.Looking back on his life Mr. E felt that the only thing he could have done differently was to be more patient, smarter, more humane and not make as many mistakes. “You look back and think that you were not able to see things that are obvious” (E. Privacy, personal communication, October 10, 2012).
“What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger” (p. 28). In the scientific novel Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince, self-acclaimed “Medical Maverick” Dr. Moalem makes in-depth analyses of current human diseases that, ironically, may have led to the survival of mankind in the past. He presents a novel concept that greatly contradicts what have been universally accepted beliefs surrounding biology and the process of human evolution for a long time. With the use of myriad scientific studies and research, he formulates surprising theories about a positive correlation between disease and humanity. Moalem narrates the scientific world’s findings that strongly exemplify his assertions, however arbitrary they may seem at first. Three of the diseases that he examines, hemochromatosis, Type 1 diabetes, and favism, could have been particularly useful for resistance against other illnesses and survival in a historically harsh environment.
In “The Victims” by Sharon Olds it describes a divorce through the eyes of the parents’ children. The first section is shown through past tense as the speaker is a child and the last section is shown in present tense with the speaker already being an adult trying to make sense of past events. The word “it” in the first two lines carries a tremendous weight, hinting at the ever so present abuse and mistreatment, but remaining non-specific. The first part generates a negative tone toward the father who is referred to as malicious by the mother who “took it” from him “in silence” until she eventually “kicked him out.” Through the entirety of the poem the children are taught to hate their father. Who taught them? Their mother showed them that their father was a villain and were taught to have no sympathy for him but “to hate you and take it” and so they did so. Although the poem never directly states what the father did to receive the family’s hated, the speaker gives examples as to why he is hated.
The book: The Maid’s Daughter was an amazing account and it was a very fascinating read that talks about the life of a Mexican woman whose journey from Mexico to the United States by becoming a maid for the wealthy elites and in turn raising a daughter at the same time which is quite a story to read about. The author is Mary Romero who is currently a professor of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. She has received several awards and has written many novels about Latino Culture. She graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree from Regis College. I think the main reason why this author chose to write the Maid’s Daughter was because she wanted to talk about what it may be like for immigrant families that come to the United States and the struggles they may face. The Maid’s Daughter focuses on mainly the 1980s in Los Angeles where started working as a Maid and raising her daughter. There are many themes that show what life was like for the Maid’s Daughter such as the life of Carmen, life of Oliva and Carmen’s role as a mom and a maid. If it wasn’t for Carmen’s will to survive it would have posed a greater challenge for both Olivia and her mother to find work.
In this paper, I will dispute that in Mary Fisher 's "A Whisper of AIDS" speech, the use of pathos and ethos assists in her demand to end the ignorance, prejudice and silence surrounding HIV/AIDS. I will discuss how she replaces the "face" of AIDS with her own, allowing the conservative crowd to connect with HIV/AIDS. Fisher approaches the speech as an epidemic speech; heavily relying on ethos and pathos she created compassion and connection to an audience that usually shows disinterest and silence on the topic of HIV/AIDS. This paper will also discuss the logos within Fisher 's speech, and how she cleverly surrounds the logos of her argument with pathos and ethos. Although, Fisher has approached the speech as an epidemic, she holds a strong pervasive argument within the speech.
“Cancer,” is a word that punctures the heart, chills the bones, and boggles the mind. People Like That Are the Only People Here,” by Lorrie Moore is a heart-wrenching short story depicting the emotional struggles and hardships of a mother who must grapple the fact that her baby has cancer. Moore’s use of fanciful, dark paradoxes and metaphors, a whimsical and haunting tone, and a unique symbolism immerses readers into the ghastly environment of observing the impending death that waits before a loved one, conveying the notion that when one is in danger of losing their loved one, they must enter the fantasy realm to maintain their sanity.
Terry Williams, on the other hand, instead of focusing on the numbers of the cancer, she focuses on the descriptions of cancer through her all five senses in seeing her mother’s struggle with cancer. She let us feels, the grim hand of cancer that wraps around her mother’s life. To her, cancer has become a “disease of shame” which encourages people to hide and lies (Williams 93). But, it’s also more than just a disease caused by random mutation, but it was also the rope at which her mother’s life hang on. Perhaps it’s not that she didn’t focus on the statistics and the numbers about cancer, but perhaps it was because the thought of her mother’s suffering alone had her mind occupied. Terry Williams’s poetical tone in explaining about her mother’s fighting with cancer allowed us to understand the effects that cancer had caused to the victim. Cancer, as she believes, doesn’t only affecting her mother’s life but it also affects herself, for “perhaps the umbilical cord between Mother and [her] has never been cut”
“Wish for a Young Wife”, by Theodore Roethke, may seem to be more than just a simple epithalamium, for the way the poet presents his writing compels the reader to question his true intentions. Nevertheless, although it is easy for the reader to trip down this path, a closer reading, in which one pays particular attention to aspects such the poem's imagery, rhyme scheme, meter, and parallelism, allows them to acknowledge that as the poet appreciates his wife and elaborates on what he wants for her, it is in fact the ambiguity of the poem that doubles the effect of his sincerity and love for his young wife.
The idea of Mother Earth is extremely empowering for women; most women believe that, right? Ellen Cronan Rose finds the idea of mother earth tremendously unempowering. Rose writes in her article “The Good Mother: from Gaia to Gilead”, that the imagery of mother earth is deeply problematic and is harmful to the feminist cause. This is a shocking view considering that most women don’t seem to have a problem with that idea. Ellen Cronan Rose states that the “mother earth” metaphor is harmful to the way women are viewed in society because it perpetuates negative stereotypes against women, it views the earth and women primarily as producers, and it overlooks the fact that both men and women are connected to nature. She goes in-depth into how mother earth imagery can impact women.
“the mother” was written by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1945 who was born in topeka Kansas on June 7, 1917. “the mother” was published in her 1945 collection “A Street in Bronzeville”, in 1950 Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize.(bio) “the mother” is a great description of a mother going through a time of remembering her wrongs and pondering on what could have been. The poem “the mother” is a anti-abortion poem, it is a emotional outpour of the sense of guilt by a mother who has regrets, she speaks of mothers who have had abortions and how they will never forget. The title “the mother” is not capitalized so it makes it feel as if the writer is making the mother less important or not important at all.
Well, not quite. She doesn’t say cancer right away. Mom and Dad don’t know all the details yet, and Mom doesn’t reveal the cancer part right away. But she tells you that Henri has to have his kidney removed. And that’s scary. It’s scary to me and I’m seven years older than you are. Your little brother has cancer. You’ll cry, right there in the car, with Henri’s friend Ava in the back seat. Mom will cry a little too. Mom will cry a lot in the next year, she’s just as strong as Henri is. You get home and Henri is in the front lawn. He got to go to Burger King for lunch, in between his tests, and he got a green dinosaur toy. He’s just sitting there, playing. Happy. Looking back on that, I know now how miraculous that is. How incredible bravery is amplified by youthful innocence. You won’t understand that, and that’s ok. There are a lot of