Book details
The Cancer Journals
- Title: The Cancer Journals Foreword by Tracy K. Smith
- Author Audre Lorde
- Narrator: Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins
- Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, LGBTQ Writers, Black Writers, Women Writers, Disability Politics, Narrative Medicine, Biography & Memoir, Health, Fitness & Diet, Politics, Society & Current Affairs
- Publisher: Penguin Random House
- Publication date: 1980/2020/2022
- Page count: 96 pages
- Audiobook length: 3 hours 30 minutes
The Checklist Manifesto
- Title: The Checklist Manifesto How to Get Things Right
- Author: Atul Gawande
- Narrator: John Bedford Lloyd
- Genre: Nonfiction, Self-help, Narrative Medicine, Health, Fitness & Diet, Business & Money
- Publisher: Metropolitan/ Macmillan Audio
- Publication date: 2009
- Page count: 240 pages
- Audiobook length: 6 hours 8 minutes
My review of the Cancer Journals and The Checklist Manifesto
I have been planning to write a review of The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande for my Backlist series. But then Sayantani DasGupta went viral for her thoughts about the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad.
Confused? Welcome to my brain. Let me explain.
By night, Dr. Sayantani DasGupta is a bestselling author, but by day she is a professor of narrative medicine. So when the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad controversy took off, she discussed the ad’s underlying eugenic themes. When physicians ask her what books they should read, she recommends Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals. After watching her video, I immediately saw The Cancer Journals audiobook was Available Now and checked it out. As I finished the book, I realized that the Cancer Journals and the Checklist Manifesto represent the patient-doctor relationship. And now I’m also reviewing The Cancer Journals.
The Cancer Journals
Published in 1980, the Cancer Journals is Audre Lorde’s collection of diary entries, poems, and essays about her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Reading it now, it’s easy to forget how revolutionary talking about cancer was in 1980. Her stories are vulnerable and empowering without the saccharine sweetness of inspirational self-help.
Lorde exposes her own raw emotions about her cancer journey and the limitations of the American medical system in the late 1970s and early 80s. At a visit to her doctor’s office, after her mastectomy, they tell her to wear her lambswool substitute so that she does not “lower morale” among those working in the office. This encounter shows how oppressive systems prioritize the comfort of those who operate within the system over the needs of those who must engage with it. The physician’s feelings, not the patient’s, are prioritized here. Lorde rejects those priorities and flips that narrative.
Her most powerful words come as she meditates on the cost of silence.
“My silences had not protected me; your silences will not protect you” and later says, “What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say?”
The Checklist Manifesto
In The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande begins by talking about how the medical system nearly failed a stabbing victim by not asking the most basic question. Gawande’s solution? A simple checklist. Amazingly, physicians did not routinely use checklists in operating rooms until recently. In many instances, Gawande and his team introduced the checklist into the hospital workflow for the first time.
But the real challenge with a checklist, Gawande argues, is balancing the list so it’s just high level enough but also hits the right details. In an emergency, your team must be able to run through the checklist quickly. He learns that limiting the checklist length is ideal. However, the checklist also should stimulate you to think of solutions without bogging you down in the details. He applies the lessons of pilots whose work in high-stress situations means they have to make very quick decisions.
For checklists to work best, the person running through the checklist has to have a certain level of expertise to effectively use it. As an editor, I’ve tended to take the opposite approach to checklists. I have made them detailed often focusing on common errors. Gawande assumes his checklist users have that knowledge already.
While it might seem odd to say that Lorde and Gawande are in conversation with each other, Lorde‘s and Gawande’s approaches to the system they critique offer parallel and sometimes intersecting perspectives. Furthermore, Lorde has something to offer Gawande. Whereas Lorde’s focus is more on the emotional journey of a patient in treatment, Gawande’s approach is far more focused on the technical aspects. I would’ve liked to have seen a little bit more emotion penetrate the clinical nature of his approach.
You should read these books if:
- You are a physician or work in medicine
- You have felt unsure what words to speak at a time when so many are being silenced
- You want to rethink your approach to the humble checklist
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