1. Cathy Read, introduction to Cancer: Through the Eyes of Ten Women (London: Pandora Press, 1997),
2. ed. Patricia Duncker and Vicky Wilson; quoted in Living on the Margins: Women Writers on Breast Cancer, ed. Hilda Raz (New York: Persea Books, 1999), p. xv.
3. Julia Darling, Apology for Absence (Todmorden: Arc Publications, 2004), p. 36.
4. A 2012 study of cancer incidence in the United States shows that ‘despite having lower incidence rates, black women had a 41% higher breast cancer death rate. More black women were diagnosed at regional or distant cancer stage compared with white women (45% versus 35%). For every 100 breast cancers diagnosed, black women had nine more deaths than white women (27 deaths per 100 breast cancers diagnosed among black women compared with 18 per 100 among white women)’ (Kathleen A. Cronin et al., ‘Vital Signs: Racial Disparities in Breast Cancer Severity — United States, 2005–2009’, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 61, no. 45 (2012), pp. 922–6, at p. 922,
http://www.cdc.gov
/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6145a5.htm?s_cid=mm6145a5_w).
5. Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), p. 255.