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  • The Queer Art of Survival
  • Lana Lin (bio) and H. Lan Thao Lam (bio)

When I received a letter from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center inviting me to participate in a study for “Breast Cancer Survivors,” rather than ignoring it as I had other appeals of this sort, I hung on to the enclosed card, as I imagined it might speak to the notion of survival that I was pondering for this contribution. The follow-up call that came a few weeks later made clear why I disown the category of “survivor” and turn instead to fashioning my own queer art of survival. On the phone the investigator asked if I had a few moments for her to evaluate my eligibility. After having her repeat herself several times, during which I misheard her say “distrust” and “stress,” I finally agreed to submit to a “distress” monitor. This would consist of thirty-four questions that began with ranking my level of distress in the past two weeks including that day on a scale from one to ten. I selected “four.” Had I experienced distress in the past two weeks including that day in relation to child care, housing, insurance, transportation, work or school, children, partner, depression, fears, nervousness, sadness, worried (sic), spirituality and religion, loss of faith, relating to God, appearance, bathing and dressing? I was to respond only with a “yes” or “no.” This caused me some distress. I found the questions conceptually suspect and grammatically problematic, causing me to skip at least one of them. She then went through a list of eighteen physical symptoms to which I was again afforded a monosyllabic response. At the end of this barrage, she inquired if for any of the questions to which I answered “yes” was my distress related to my breast cancer. I replied “no.” She promptly informed me that I was not eligible for the study, explaining that it was intended to help breast cancer survivors and they were looking for women who were experiencing [End Page 341] distress in relation to their breast cancer or survivorship issues. I noticed that the study presumed that “help” for a “breast cancer survivor” was only warranted if distress was directly related to breast cancer, and that “survivorship issues” were equated with distress in relation to breast cancer. I ended the call with the frustratingly familiar feeling of estrangement I continually experienced with the cancer establishment during my diagnosis and treatment. The exchange brought into relief my discomfort with the homogenized and naturalized conception of the term “cancer survivor” that pervades cancer discourse. I am, of course, not alone in my disdain (Ehrenreich 2009; Jain 2013; Sulik 2011).

To the extent that I associate neither my distress nor my well-being to cancer, I fail to qualify for the kind of help that those designated as “survivors” would require. That is, survivorship research is neither addressed to me nor gains from my input. But what exactly is a “survivor” and what qualifies as a “survivorship issue”? The National Cancer Institute has an Office of Cancer Survivorship which is dedicated to “the unique needs of the growing population of cancer survivors and to enhanc[ing] our ability to address those needs.” Despite the tautology that tends to cloud so much cancer related discourse, it is all too clear that, in cancer world, there is a distinction between survival and survivorship. In cancer lingo, I seem to have no choice but to be labeled a cancer survivor because I have indeed survived my treatment and am now five years cancer free. I am hailed as a cancer survivor on every piece of correspondence I receive from the hospital, including the invitation to the study for which I was rejected. But survivorship is a different matter from survival. Survivorship, it would seem, is not something to which one defaults as a result of surviving treatment. Rather, survivorship is a particular stance vis-à-vis one’s ongoing status as a survivor, for survivors do not merely survive, but take on, handle, negotiate, and manage their survivorship. Survivorship is a category of experience that has been instrumentalized and politicized. Cure, the free magazine distributed to cancer patients...

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