All In: Cancer, Near Death, New Life

by Caitlin Breedlove, Adrienne Maree Brown (Foreword)

Eloquent and passionate, Caitlin Breedlove's cancer-focused memoir is rooted in her activism.  It's often said that cancer does not discriminate. But some groups are more likely to suffer from cancer, and some are more likely to die from the disease. And we know classism and racism increase exposure to some carcinogens, including pesticides, corroded public water systems, and workplace toxins.
Diagnosed with a deadly form of ovarian cancer in her 30s, Caitlin Breedlove draws on lessons offered by her political work, early motherhood, and her values in All Cancer, Near Death, New Life. 
With the lens—and heart—of an organizer, she chronicles harms caused by our profit-driven health care system; explores the rigors of single parenting while living with acute, chronic illness; and reveals her challenges with addiction. And like Audre Lorde (The Cancer Journals) and Barbara Ehrenreich (Brightsided)  Breedlove calls out the insidious impact of "toxic positivity" on women who live with cancer. 
As she shares her individual journey, Breedlove connects it to broader struggles for health and social justice. The result is a intensely powerful narrative, centering experiences elided in other narratives. 

Genres: Health, Nonfiction, Memoir

152 pages, Paperback

Published January 16, 2024

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tuntuu todella väärältä arvostella/arvioida toisen muistelmia munasarjasyövän ja covid-pandemian ajalta – uskon, että tämä on äärimmäisen merkityksellinen, tärkeä ja toivoa tuova kirja paitsi kirjoittajalleen, kaikille niille, jotka lukevat tätä vertaistuen muodossa. Lukekaa. Siihen tämä on ihan varmasti niin paikallaan oleva kirja, ettei toista ole.

Itselleni, tällaisena "terveenä" lukevan ihmisen kuriositeettina Breedloven muistelmat tarjoavat lähinnä mielenkiintoisen kuvan sairastuneen ihmisen mielenmaisemaan, uskomusjärjestelmään, juurien ja esiäitien lumoon, parantavien noitien istuntoihin ja toisaalta antikapitalistiseen, anti-yksilökeskeiseen yhteiskuntakritiikkiin. Aktivismistaan tuttu Breedlove osaa ammentaa taiten niin Audre Lorden kuin muidenkin aktivisti-älykköjen teorioita, ja sekoittaa ne mielenkiintoiseksi, transformatiiviseksi parantumistarinaksi.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hard to rate this one. Normally 4 stars for me means I would recommend it to anyone, but I don't think I would. I can say that I'll be hanging on to this to reread if I ever get cancer (kinehora). The kinehora feels extra appropriate since there is a lot of eastern European.... spiritually?? There is some real beauty in this book. Also some real horror. Might make anyone think twice about chemo.

[Graeme Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

All In: Cancer, Near Death, New Life is a memoir that does something genuinely rare and genuinely difficult: it tells the story of a life threatening illness without flinching from its political dimensions, and in doing so produces a work that is at once deeply personal and structurally illuminating.

Caitlin Breedlove brings to her diagnosis of deadly ovarian cancer in her thirties the same analytical rigour and moral clarity that have defined her life as an activist and organiser. The result is a book that refuses the consoling fictions that illness narratives often reach for. There is no redemptive arc imposed from the outside, no toxic positivity papering over the terror and the grinding reality of acute, chronic illness. Breedlove calls out that insidious cultural pressure with the directness of someone who has read Audre Lorde and Barbara Ehrenreich carefully and who understands, from lived experience, exactly what it costs women to perform hope on demand.

The political analysis woven throughout the memoir is among its most valuable contributions. Breedlove is clear eyed and unflinching about the ways in which classism and racism shape cancer outcomes, about the harms of a profit driven healthcare system, and about the specific, compounding burdens of navigating acute illness as a single parent. These are not detours from the personal narrative. They are integral to it, illuminating the structural forces that shape individual suffering in ways that purely personal accounts cannot.

The foreword by Adrienne Maree Brown sets the tone with precision and warmth, framing Breedlove's work within a broader tradition of politically engaged illness writing. It is a tradition Breedlove honours and advances with equal parts eloquence and passion. At just over 150 pages, the book is lean and purposeful, every sentence earning its place.

Powerful, honest, and essential. A vital addition to the literature of illness, activism, and survival.

[Frances S Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this after my best friend was diagnosed with cancer. I needed to understand something I couldn't get close enough to from the outside, and this book let me live inside it without being in it. That is a rare and gutting thing to offer someone.

She had painful periods for years. She was told it was normal. She believed them, the way women believe things when doctors say them with authority. It was ovarian cancer, the deadliest of all gynecological cancers, and it had been growing quietly while she was being reassured. That detail alone sent me straight to my doctor. It made me sit down and think hard about every symptom I had been told was just part of being a woman, every time I had been handed a prescription for pain instead of an actual answer.

What she does in this book is write through it, not around it. The hospital room is real. The isolation of going through major surgeries during a pandemic, alone, is real. Her mother showing up to help and what that looked like, the slow unraveling of her relationship under the weight of it all, the terrifying specific experience of being a single parent who might not make it, and underneath all of it her love for her daughter, ferocious and clarifying and aching. That love is the spine of the whole book.

She also refuses the toxic positivity. The "you've got this" and "stay positive" culture that asks sick people to perform optimism for the comfort of everyone around them. She is not interested in that. She is interested in the truth. I needed the truth more than I needed comfort and this book gave it to me.

If you have not been close to cancer, read this. Not to scare yourself. To know. To stop dismissing your body when it is trying to tell you something. To understand what your person is actually living when they are living it. This book is an act of love for everyone who couldn't write it themselves.

[Elle]

“I write for myself, and I write for the ones who can’t and would want me to do so. I write for her because she put off going to the doctor when she saw the signs; she was too busy caring for others. I write for him, who put off going to the doctor, because they would call him a freak for even having ovaries. I write for the woman who wanted to go to a doctor, bleeding month after month through her pants but was too broke, without insurance, and working every waking moment of her damn life.”

Caitlin Breedlove writes a candid account of her cancer journey; the book she says she would have liked to have read during her treatment. Something different from the “saccharine, so positive, pink-ribboned, white, straight, suburban” accounts that she has encountered before, the type of Literature that “sugarcoat things that are not and should not taste sweet”. Her perspective is that of a queer white woman, daughter of immigrants, who subscribes to her ancestral slavic pagan faith. Her treatment includes strong doses of taxol, a drug synthesized from extracts of the European yew, a tree abundant in Breedlove’s ancestral homeland, well known for its poison. Breedlove discusses advocating for adequate (but addictive) pain management and her cycles of withdrawal with every round of chemotherapy. She speaks of the pain, nausea, drug-induced highs, and all the implications of her diagnosis and treatment. And weaves in commentary on capitalism, broken social systems and the dualities that often govern our decisions. But she also speaks about the things that tethers her her to the earth, her reasons for choosing life, and her resolution to live a new, different life on the other side of her treatment. Of hope.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unflinching and honest, I was captivated by this memoir and will share it widely. Favorite passages include:

“our deaths, our near deaths, our salvation, and our new lives are all catalysts for transformation in which we have some choice, some power, even when we feel we do not.” (p. 5)

“we live in a time when people are so scared to build that they critique for destruction not construction.” (P. 60)

“…none of us are prepared to lead. No one knows what they are doing, no matter our competence or experience. The time we live in carries every wound and scar and harm from our human past forward into the present, a time unlike any in human history. So how would any of us know exactly what to do or how to do it?” (P.79)

[Ems · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a hard hitting, passionate, queer feminist memoir about the authors journey through cancer. I appreciated the nuance around class, racism, health access and addiction especially.
The spirituality narratives didn't connect with me completely but I see their value nonetheless.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was exceptional. Lyrical and loud and quiet and painful. I read it in sips, savoring and needing to take space and breaks between.
I had the extreme pleasure of hearing Caitlin interviewed at my local bookstore earlier this month, and I don't think it's hyperbole to say there was magic there.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful memoir of the pandemic and cancer during the pandemic.

[Caitlin Saenz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A raw journal style memoir about cancer, life, death, spirituality, and a want to live.