title: "Your breasts/sliced off": literary images of breast cancer.
abstract: This essay explores how breast cancer and mastectomy are portrayed in twentieth-century North American literature. The purpose in doing so is to examine our understandings of how women in contemporary North American culture may experience this potentially fatal disease and disfigurement-understandings that often are narrowly prescribed by the abstract, universalizing language of medicine. The essay is divided into four sections based on the readings of the selected literature: denial and fear; sadness and pain; shame through others' eyes; and transcendence.
authors.affiliation: Human Values in Medicine Program, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, Rootstown 44272.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wear
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology* / Q000601:surgery; D003717:Denial, Psychological; D004324:Drama; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008408:Mastectomy / Q000523:psychology*; D008513:Medicine in Literature; D008875:Middle Aged; D009656:North America; D011037:Poetry as Topic; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000209:etiology*; D016387:Women's Health