The body’s unruly event of illness: (re)orienting the cancer memoir in Anne Boyer’s The Undying

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper argues that Anne Boyer’s The Undying (2019) reorients the writing of illness memoirs, in particular the breast cancer memoir. Thinking of the ill body as a “queer orientation,” following Sara Ahmed (2006), I analyze how Boyer reconsiders and attends to different ways of narrating the ill body going beyond genre conventions. I consider how Boyer’s memoir assesses the “crisis of care” (Fraser) in contemporary society as well as the role of the cancer patient in traditional breast cancer memoirs, where suffering is presented as a homogenizing experience devoid of sociopolitical circumstances. I argue that Boyer’s use of (re)orientation of writing in her illness narrative is key for a different understanding of breast cancer that fosters collective action for the redistribution of justice and care.