Audre Lorde
After a mastectomy in 1978 she wrote The Cancer Journals, refusing a prosthesis and the expectation that women hide their cancer. The book became a founding text of patient writing.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992), poet and essayist, had a mastectomy for breast cancer in 1978. The Cancer Journals (1980) drew on her diaries to examine fear, mortality, the pressure to wear a prosthesis and look as if nothing had happened, and the particular experience of a Black lesbian woman in the medical system. She declined a prosthesis and argued that visible survivors mattered to one another. She was diagnosed with liver cancer in 1984 and wrote about it in A Burst of Light (1988), including her choice of care in Europe. She died in St Croix on 17 November 1992 at 58. Her work is taught in medical humanities and remains a reference for patient voice and for health disparities.