"The Adventures of Cancer Bitch is witty and relentless, surprising
and honest. Wisenberg has walked through the Valley of Cancer and she
is willing to tell all; this is a cornucopia of breast cancer
information as well as a very smart, funny read from an excellent
writer."—Audrey Niffenegger, author, The Time Traveler’s Wife
"Winnowed and expanded from her blog of the same name, The Adventures
of Cancer Bitch leaps out at you will all the bracing varieties of
fear . . . . [and] the book is funny, damned funny. Much more Rabelais
and Woody Allen than Homer."—Bookslut
“Forget the sappy little pink ribbons. When chemotherapy takes S. L.
Wisenberg's hair, she turns her bald head into an antiwar billboard.
Read The Adventures of Cancer Bitch to meet a smart, funny,
big-hearted woman who questions everything from her own mortality to
career envy to why nobody thinks the particulars of hair loss are as
fascinating a subject for extended dinner-party conversation as she
does. Along the way, Wisenberg makes you proud to think that you, too,
might possibly be a cancer bitch.”—Ruth Pennebaker, author, Both Sides
Now
“Frank, funny, fierce, and at times devastating, Cancer Bitch is a
rare achievement. S. L. Wisenberg has written a book of tremendous
value for anyone who has ever had cancer or anyone who has ever
worried about getting it; in short, everyone. ”— Rachel Shukert,
author, Have You No Shame? and Other Regrettable Stories
Cancer is S. L. Wisenberg’s muse, and Cancer Bitch is her blog.
Drawing on a wealth of personal, literary, and historical sources—from
Jewish liturgy to the first crude mastectomies, from Anne Frank to
Emma Goldman—The Adventures of Cancer Bitch creates an indelible image
of a politically engaged, self-aware (sometimes neurotic) woman facing
a daunting disease with equal measures of humor, well-founded fear,
and keen intelligence.
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 El, 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.
S. L. Wisenberg is the author of The Sweetheart Is In and Holocaust
Girls: History, Memory, and Other Obsessions. The New Yorker,
Ploughshares, Tikkun, the New England Review, and the Michigan
Quarterly Review have published her poetry and prose, and her work has
been widely anthologized, most recently in Rules of Thumb: 73 Authors
Reveal Their Fiction Writing Fixations, Short Takes: Brief Encounters
with Contemporary Nonfiction, and Creating Nonfiction: A Guide and
Anthology. She is a codirector of Northwestern University's MA/MFA in
creative writing program as well as a visiting scholar in gender
studies at Northwestern. She also teaches at the University of Chicago
Graham School of General Studies. Her blog Cancer Bitch can be read at
http://cancerbitch.blogspot.
Wisenberg is also an alum of the Iowa Socialist Party, and is a
member of the William Morris Society
