summary

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote an essay in Harper’s Magazine called “Cancer Land.” In this essay she writes about how she handles the news that she was just diagnosed with breast cancer. She also speaks about how other women handle living with breast cancer, and how breast cancer is becoming so popular.

Ehrenreich explains throughout this essay how popular Breast cancer is, as she calls it “killing cells”. She explains how the color pink and a teddy bear represents Breast cancer and chemotherapy and how there is over hundreds of websites dedicated all to this one disease. As Ehrenreich searches cures online, she happens to stumbles across a site where other women chat about Breast cancer. She notices ups and downs in the women’s conversations, how some seem to look in the bright side, where others are just overly sick and tired. As Ehreneich reads more, she sees how Breast cancer use to be the dreaded secret and now is more popular then AIDS, cystic fibrosis, or spinal injury. As Ehrereich reads more and more about this evil disease she knows she has a long fight ahead of her and she will not go to sleep with a smile on her face.