No one is perfect so no one’s feminist will be perfect, but the value of feminism is still significant. It discussed many of the issues that feminism works to address in common-sense, yet meaningful ways and reassured readers that a feminist identity does not require perfect behavior or understanding. I enjoyed that it offered an introduction to feminism that was cognizant of reservations that some people may have about feminism. I wrote lots of notes while reading, including questions it inspired me to ask myself and consider. This article was originally published on Feminist by Roxane Gay was the perfect first book for our new feminist book club, Let’s Read About Feminism!Ī fun, accessible, and relatable read that was impressive in its range and thoughtfulness. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
And that was just the beginning.įrom “HEALING: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient” by Theresa Brown. The nurse was lost on the bottom, the patient flailing on the top. It was still sunny and a little colder than normal for September, but I had changed. Not even a day had passed since I started my testing. She put her arms around me, a stranger, and said, “They can cure this.” But that was what I did: comforted strangers. The ultrasound tech came back into the room so quietly I didn’t hear her, but suddenly her arms were around me. Not just any kind of patient, either, but a cancer patient. My nurse-self had abandoned me and I had become a patient. Fear had found me and everything seemed upside down. “This looks ugly.” She left, and as soon as I heard the door latch, I sat up and sobbed, my whole body shaking. I’d had those before and they’re not cancerous. “Could it be a fibroid adenoma?” I blurted out.
Actual mortality-which is to say, mine-had never, before this moment, seemed real. Other people’s mortality is categorically different from one’s own.
I figured I was knowledgeable enough about having cancer because I knew about specific cancers, that I understood cancer patients’ feelings because I’d cared for so many, that I’d confronted mortality because I’d had a number of patients die. I knew the importance of letting the doctor finish the scan, that panicking wouldn’t help me or her as she took final measurements or did whatever she had to do. I’m a former oncology nurse and a hospice nurse. Tears dribbled out of each eye and slid down the sides of my face as I lay, silent, on the exam table. I didn’t move, speak, or sit up, but I did begin to cry, slowly. It might seem like she could have said more, but those four words were already too many. I saw her in profile, gray hair pulled back from her face, her eyes focused on the screen. Finally she said, “I see a mass.” A mass. She took a long time, which annoyed me, and then, once I considered why she might be slow, scared me. I might have wondered why the tech left, but instead I read my neon pink book, word by word, without knowing what I was reading.Ī questionable scan merits an on-the-spot reading by an on-site radiologist, who came in and redid the ultrasound. I waited calmly in the hallway in between the two scans, and then I waited in the ultrasound room after the tech left and before the radiologist came in. I had a mammogram and an ultrasound: right side only. Well, not always, but often, and I’d sweated the “need for additional screening” enough times that I had convinced myself there’s no value to being anxious in advance. I had mentioned it to my husband, Arthur, who was out of town, but no one else. The color of a bad, as in badass, feminist: the kind of person who reads Bad Feminist while waiting for a mammogram. The inside cover of the book is neon pink-not the girlish pink of Disney princesses and bubble gum, but a knowing, winking pink. I was reading Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay the day I went for my scan. Host Jane Clayson speaks with Theresa Brown about her new book “ Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient,” which intertwines stories of her work as an oncology and cancer nurse with her own treatment following a breast cancer diagnosis.