Manmade Breast Cancers

By Zillah Eisenstein

Book Overview

A new understanding of humanity and feminism from the starting point of breast health is the ultimate goal of Zillah Eisenstein's political memoir of her family's experience with breast cancer. The well-known feminist author argues that politics always needs the personal, and that the personal is never enough on its own. Her return to the personal side of the political combines the two for a radicalized way of seeing, viewing, and knowing.The author strives to bring together a critique of environmental damage and the health of women's bodies, gain perspective on the role race plays as a factor in breast cancers and in political agendas, link prevention and treatment, and connect individual support and political change.Eisenstein was sixteen when her forty-five-year-old mother successfully battled breast cancer. Her two sisters, Sarah and Giah, were in their twenties when they were diagnosed, but neither of them survived. She received her own diagnosis when she was forty. Despite her family history, however, Eisenstein rejects the simple argument that genes are simply determining, rather than liable to influence by external factors. She also questions the dominance of the theory that breast cancer is caused by high lifetime exposure to estrogen. Instead, she views breast cancer as an environmental disease, best understood in terms of ecological, racial, economic, and sexual influences on individual women. She uses the term "manmade" to indicate not only industrial carcinogens and other cultural causes, but also the male-dominated and -defined scientific practices of research and treatment.In response, Manmade Breast Cancers offers a retelling of the meaning of breast cancer and a discussion of universal feminist issues about the body. The author says she writes "to discover a more just globe which will treasure the health of all of our bodies." The emotional depth and intellectual breadth of her argument adds new dimensions to how we understand breast cancer.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801487072
• ISBN13: 9780801487071
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Honest, Compelling and Provocative

Eisenstein's personal narrative of the breast cancer in her life is honest and compelling, and her theoretical analysis of the factors involved in breast cancer is provacative. "Manmade Breast Cancers" opend my eyes and gave me a thorough education in both the biology and the genetics of breast cancer, and the role of the pharmacutical-medical-industrial complex in establishing dominant thought patterns about the disease. Eisenstein proposes that we look beyond the dominant discourse to the myriad social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of the breast cancer experience. As I read "Manmade Breast Cancers," I found myself simultaneously addicted to the author's personal story, and also thrown off by the disjointed addition of the feminist theorizing embedded within it. It was as if each alone would have worked, but together they did not always read smoothly. This could be for two reasons: one, the because writer is more experienced with theorizing, and two becasue the topic of her narrative is so intimate and emotional that the reader has to switch gears to read the theory. However, while the combination of personal story and scholarly theory is stylistically a bit akward, their coexistance make the author's point, and draw the reader into the thesis of the book in more ways than one. ( As I got used to it, I kind of liked it!)Eisenstein's discussion of the body brought me to a different awareness of my own body, and her candid look at her emotions is admirable and unique. I highly recommend this book to increase our awarness of the many factors involved in any disease.

An amazing speaker and author

I just had the privalege of seeing Dr. Eisenstein lecture at an annual women's symposium at my college. Her theories about the politics of breast cancer are truly profound and present a new way of looking at a disease which affects the lives of so many women. Every woman should read this book, this is serious subject that cannot be ignored.