The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

By S.L. Wisenberg

Wisenberg may have lost a breast, but she retained her humor, outrage, and skepticism toward common wisdom and most institutions. While following the prescribed protocols at the place she called Fancy Hospital, Wisenberg is unsparing in her descriptions of the fumblings of new doctors, her own awkward announcement to her students, and the mounds of unrecyclable plastic left at a survivors' walk. Combining the personal with the political, she shares her research on the money spent on pink ribbons instead of preventing pollution, and the disparity in medical care between the insured and the uninsured. When chemotherapy made her bald, she decorated her head with henna swirls in front and an antiwar protest in back. During treatment, she also recorded the dailiness of life in Chicago as she rode the L, taught while one-breasted, and attended High Holiday services and a Passover seder.

Wisenberg's writing has been compared to a mix of Leon Wieseltier and Fran Lebowitz, and in this book, she has Wieseltier's erudition and Lebowitz's self-deprecating cleverness: "If anybody ever offers you the choice between suffering and depression, take the suffering. And I don't mean physical suffering. I mean emotional suffering. I am hereby endorsing psychic suffering over depression."

From The Adventures of Cancer Bitch:

I found that when you invite people to a pre-mastectomy party, they show up. Even those with small children. The kids were so young that they didn't notice that most of the food had nipples. . . . I talked to everyone--about what I'm not sure. Probably about my surgery. Everyone told me how well I looked. I felt giddy. I was going to go under, but not yet; I was going to be cut, but not yet; I was going to be bald, but not yet. As my friend who had bladder cancer says: The thing about cancer is you feel great until they start treating you for it.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1587298023
• ISBN13: 9781587298028
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: University of Iowa Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Ugly, fun, irreverent, holy and totally honest and authentic.

"I was unsure whether this book would be angry and "radical" but it isn't. It is very much "life" like--ugly, fun, irreverent, holy. I related to some of her musings very well, others not so much. But, it did bring some questions into focus for me. And, clarified some of my own concerns. Well done."

Review of The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

An honest, straightforward recollection of a difficult journey in one woman's life with cancer. The book is written with compassion and and humor but without self-pity. It would be helpful to any woman facing cancer, especiallly breast cancer. I highly recommend it.

A 21st Century Superior to Audre Lorde's "Cancer Journals" - a must read

I came to this book by accident... a happy accident! I had read Wisenberg's first book, the linked short story collection, "The Sweetheart is in" about 5 years back - and it really made an impression on me: a fresh voice writing short fiction. It should have been lauded that year perhaps right up there with A.M. Holmes "Safety of Objects" - both were kind of best in show picks for me that year for new writing (Holmes' book of course got optioned into a movie not the equal of its source text... perhaps Wisenberg's new book would have gotten aisle-end retail displays if she too had been optioned by Hollywood straight out of the gate.) But "Sweetheart" barely prepared me for the raw truth telling that I found in "Adventures of Cancer Bitch." If you liked Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" or Alfred Kazin's "Walker in the City," Wisenberg's "Cancer Bitch" is the 21st century inheritor to the throne in the memoir milieu. We are deeply rooted in sense of place (Chicago's Wrigleyville), in sense of time (2006-2007 - on the eve of political change pre-Pres. Obama), and in sense of those who share Sandi Wisenberg's nitty-gritty reality of living with cancer (her husband, her best friends - who she shepherds through their own ordeal with M.S. and the loss of one of their children to cancer years earlier). Cancer is what happens to you when you are making other plans, and no where is this more clear that in Wisenberg's books. Yes, cancer, but first, the dishes, and the writing students she is preparing to teach, and the reviews she has to write for print, and the (telling) visits from her mother, that give us a sense of the strong older women Wisenberg is growing into one day - years after cancer in a memory. There are images I will never forget: the lotion as compassionate salve her neighbor's child is ailing in bed, the drunken Wrigleyville frat boys who shout out to her as she walks home with messages emblazoned in henna on her shorn head, the sight in the wastepaper basket in the Nicaraguan school bathroom where she taught at the end of the 80s (i'll say no more), the gentle catch-and-release of a spider (perhaps cancer inspired buddhist thoughts of interconnection), and moreover the visions of her painful struggle where alas she relents to the pain when need be - but never gives in to the cancer apologists like Sheryl Crow who say maybe this is an internalization of lack of self love & acceptance (rather than a confluence of environmental factors, pollution, the American animal based diet, etc). Through the book, Wisenberg goes on a journey of intimate self love and acceptance of her one human body in a way I think one could only do when sticken with something like cancer. In giving up a part of herself, a literal part of herself, she gains a strength and resilience by the end of the text that is the hard fought gain of only cancer survivors. I hope to never have cancer or personally have anyone I know stricken with the disease, but if that m

More than a cancer tale

Life goes on during cancer treatments, and Wisenberg shows that a sense of humor is an advantage. Her thoroughly engrossing book chronicles the ups and downs of treatment and more--being a wife, friend, daughter, teacher, and discerning observer of the absurdities of contemporary life. This is a captivating read!

the thing about cancer bitch

The thing about Cancer Bitch is you don't have to worry about getting pep talks or anything soft or fuzzy from her. Some people want that sort of thing. But for my money, I like the pure intelligence of Cancer Bitch, the willingness to take on the bitch mantle and everything that goes with it.