Cancer's Revelations: Malignancies and Therapies in a Recent Chinese Novel

In Bi Shumin's un-translated novel, Save the Breast (2003), marketed as China's first psychotherapy novel, multiple storylines suggest diverse paths to healing. To explore the complex phenomenology of breast cancer, this paper analyzes the novel's treatment of the characters' distinct predicaments, the large-scale social ills they reveal, and ways therapy cultures may alleviate or exacerbate local forms of suffering. Though the novel celebrates group therapy and communicative exercises, it challenges the individualistic psychology of many therapeutic paradigms. Following modern Chinese fiction's long tradition of using illness for allegory, breast cancer is here also a metaphor for sickness at the heart of a nation racked by rapid social and economic change. Analyzing the novel's scrutiny of biomedical and other forms of power, the paper addresses deep distress surrounding not only breast cancer but also Cultural Revolution trauma, seismic market transitions, domestic violence, prostitution, and gender stereotyping.