You Don't Have to Be Your Mother - Softcover

Feldman, Gayle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044990993X ISBN 13: 9780449909935

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1995

Synopsis

"I am the daughter of a woman who died of breast cancer in her forties, the age I am now....and I am a woman who, at age 40, while in the eighth month of a first, much-desired and difficult-to-achieve pregnancy, discovered that I had breast cancer...."
PRAISE FOR GAYLE FELDMAN AND
YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE YOUR MOTHER
"THIS MEMOIR TELLS THE VALIANT AND DRAMATIC STORY of [Feldman's] struggle to survive not only for herself, but for her child....Feldman convincingly describes the distinctive nature of breast cancer--how a woman can feel betrayed by her body when something that defines femaleness can cause death....Though Feldman's story is special, her enterprising and lyrical writing style makes this memoir universal and vital."
--New York Newsday
"ADMIRABLE...REASSURING...MOVING."
--The Washington Post Book World
"[AN] UPLIFTING MEMOIR...[Feldman] is a lovely, modulated writer, capable of the understatement that is perhaps crucial to writing about this subject."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
"FELDMAN WRITES POIGNANTLY AND BEAUTIFULLY."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
"A DEEPLY MOVING AND ELEGANTLY WRITTEN STORY OF A HEROIC WOMAN who had to make a series of life-and-death decisions in the context of a grim family legacy and a child not yet born, and who did it with courage and grace. It will have great meaning not only to those women suddenly confronted with a breast cancer diagnosis but to anyone who has known the burden of living with a familial cancer threat. No reader can fail to be swept up by this powerful story."
--Ruth Spear
Cofounder, NABCO
The National Alliance of
Breast Cancer Organizations

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

The moving memoir of a woman who discovered she had breast cancer when she was eight months pregnant--and the same age as her mother was when she died of breast cancer in her 40s. In a period of less than three weeks, Feldman (an editor at Publishers Weekly) had her baby's birth induced and her breast removed. The baby was healthy and the operation successful. A year later, she had her second breast removed as a prophylactic measure- -to ward off the 50%-60% chance that the cancer would reoccur. Those are the unadorned facts. But this is a tale of quiet courage, told by a woman who, as a teenager, had watched her mother slowly die because her cancer had been misdiagnosed until it was too late. Although Feldman also had seen a sister-in-law and a friend die of breast cancer, she had friends who had survived, strong support from her husband's family in England and from her own in Philadelphia, and an extraordinary husband. There was also plenty of money, good health coverage, and help at home for the baby. She had the luck--or the good judgment or the savvy or the drive--to find talented and compassionate doctors, including obstetrician, surgeons, and oncologist. That most of them were women for this most female of experiences may not be a coincidence. But this is also a diary of fear, loss, anger, confusion, and frustration. In an effort to still the anxiety of repeating her mother's experience, she explores her mother's stoical last years and wonders why mystery surrounded the operations and hospital sojourns. ``Talking wasn't done in those days,'' explains an older woman who had survived. Feldman makes up for that generation's silence by talking with simple honesty, without self-pity, about her three weeks in hell. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

This medical memoir is the latest of the recent personal accounts of breast cancer that have flooded the market, among them Joyce Wadler's My Breast (LJ 9/15/92), Juliet Wittman's Breast Cancer Journal (LJ 3/1/93), and Musa Mayer's Examining Myself: One Woman's Story of Breast Cancer Treatment and Recovery (LJ 10/1/93). This trend stems from the fact that 182,000 American women are diagnosed each year with the disease. What makes this book special is that Publishers Weekly Book News editor Feldman, in addition to having a family history of breast cancer (her mother died of the disease), was eight months pregnant when diagnosed. Her story of an induced delivery, subsequent biopsies, and a mastectomy cannot fail to move the reader while educating at the same time. Writing in a personal, easy-to-understand style, Feldman draws you close to her and makes you want to do more for her and others with this devastating illness. Of all these recent books, You Don't Have To Be Your Mother speaks most compellingly to the emotional agony of experiencing a life-threatening disease. Highly recommended.
--Janet M. Coggan, Univ. of Florida Libs., Gainesville
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 044990993X
• ISBN 13: 9780449909935
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256