Elaine Schattner. From Whispers to Shouts: The Ways We Talk about Cancer. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2022. xiv + 360 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN
978-0-231-19226-2.
Reviewed by Anne Marie Champagne (Yale Center for Cultural Sociology)
Published on H-Sci-Med-Tech (May, 2024)
Commissioned by Penelope K. Hardy (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse)
Happy to see this book review published today: “Champagne on Schattner, ‘From Whispers to Shouts: The Ways We Talk about Cancer'”
I don’t normally agree to write book reviews, but I accepted this one way back in 2023 because the topic is personally meaningful to me. Not only am I a cancer survivor, but at the time I received the invitation to write this review four persons near and dear to me, three of them family members, had been newly diagnosed with advanced cancers. (I actually agreed to do two book reviews last year, a second one for the BMJ Humanities Journal. Both reviews were delayed and the second I eventually had to decline as a result of the physical and financial demands that a cancer crisis makes on a family.) I am not at liberty to discuss the details of others’ battles with the disease, but so far 3 of the 4 are still with us, and my heart will ache the rest of its days for my sister-in-law (my late husband’s sister) who passed in November.
An invaluable gift of accepting this review was having the opportunity to learn the history of various cancer organizations and the people (mostly women!) who played a significant role in moving cancer discourses, education, and research forward.
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