The Question Is When: Fear, Time, and Risk Management in Amy Boesky’s BRCA Memoir

Abstract

In 2010, Amy Boesky published What We Have, a memoir about her family’s experience with cancer. With it at its core and other works by the same author as secondary sources, this paper explores the link between fear, time and risk in Boesky’s writing. Through a close reading supported by theories about illness narratives, hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, and affects, it demonstrates that Boesky’s fear conditions the ways in which she manages risk and the passing of time, and that the narratization of time as lived through her fear is the most salient characteristic of her autobiographical praxis.

Keywords:

• BRCA narratives
• fear
• time
• risk management
• relationality

Disclosure Statement

The author reports that there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 Smith and Watson, Reading, 215.

2 Jain, Malignant, 4.

3 Ahmed, The Cultural, pos. 224. I have used the Kindle version, which does not provide page numbers, but positions. The same for Conway 1997, Aho and Aho 2008, and Bliss 2018.

4 Boesky, “Introduction,” 15.

5 Boesky, “From Diagnosis,” 84.

6 Ahmed, The Cultural, pos. 1604.

7 Ibid., pos. 1617.

8 BRCA is an abbreviation of BRreast CAncer gene. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are the two genes identified as impacting an individual’s chances of developing breast and ovarian cancer. BRCA memoirs are the stories devised by authors who discover the mutation in their family and write about its implications.

9 1593–1633. Welsh minister, and orator associated with the Metaphysical Poets. “Easter Wings” was published in the posthumous collection The Temple. It was originally printed horizontally, looking like wings, but it can also be found in a vertical layout, reminiscent of an hourglass (see http://idlespeculations-terryprest.blogspot.com/2007/04/easter-wings.html).

10 Rose, The Politics, 108.

11 Ahall, “Affect,” 40.

12 Boesky, “From Diagnosis,” 86.

13 Boesky, “In Samarra,” 64.

14 Boesky, What We Have, 2.

15 Conway, Ordinary, pos. 432.

16 Smith, “Material,” 89.

17 Couser, Vulnerable, 177.

18 Hallowell and Lawton, “Negotiating,” 429.

19 Boesky, What We Have, 2.

20 Ibid., 304.

21 Boesky, “From Diagnosis,” 84.

22 Boesky, What We Have, 304.

23 DeShazer, Mammographies, 70-71.

24 Boesky, “From Diagnosis,” 84.

25 Ibid., 84.

26 Boesky, What We Have, 320.

27 Ibid., 323.

28 Roth, Previvors, 2. The term was coined by the advocacy group FORCE (Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered) in 2000 and has become widespread. Rose alternatively proposed the label pre-patient in The Politics of Life Itself, but previvor is more frequent.

29 Nayar, “Autobiogenography,” 2.

30 Boesky, “Introduction,” 6.

31 Boesky, “From Diagnosis,” 85. In this article, Boesky discusses Gessen’s work, which in this respect is similar to Queller’s. For a detailed discussion of Queller’s, see Fernández-Morales 2018.

32 Boesky, What We Have, 2.

33 Tanner, “Metaphors,” 40.

34 Rose, The Politics, 4.

35 Mukherjee, The Gene, 441.

36 Boesky, What We Have, 2.

37 Mukherjee, The Gene, 441.

38 Boesky, What We Have, 143.

39 Cook, “Medical Identity,” 65.

40 Ibid., 66.

41 Eisen and Weber, “Prophylactic Mastectomy.”

42 Reibstein, Staying, 207.

43 Harmon, “Cancer Free.”

44 Roth, Previvors, 8.

45 Jolie, “My Medical Choice” and “Diary of a Surgery.”

46 See Kluger et al. 2013 or Lebo et al. 2015.

47 Stark, Pandora’s, 31.

48 Jain, Malignant, 183.

49 Jain, “Living,” 78.

50 Jain, Malignant, 28.

51 Ahmed, The Cultural, pos. 4659.

52 Jain, “Living,” 79.

53 Boesky, “This Is How,” 91.

54 Tomkins, Affect, 931.

55 Ahmed, The Cultural, pos. 1527.

56 Ngai, Ugly, 209.

57 Boesky, What We Have, 96.

58 Fang et al., “Psychosocial,” 338.

59 Boesky, What We Have, 32.

60 Segerer et al., “Factors,” 256.

61 Boesky, “This Is How.”

62 Boesky, What We Have, 249.

63 Ibid., 10.

64 Hallowell and Lawton, “Negotiating,” 429.

65 Dean, “It’s Not If,” 21.

66 Werner-Lin, “Beating,” 416.

67 Ibid., 429.

68 Boesky, What We Have, 296.

69 Ibid., 10.

70 Jain, “Living,” 80.

71 Rose, The Politics, 17.

72 Bliss, “Biomedicalization,” pos. 1209.

73 Ehrenreich, “Welcome,” 45.

74 Lemke, “Susceptible,” 151.

75 About feminist perspectives on biopower in autobiographical writing about cancer, see Fernández-Morales 2012 and Fernández-Morales 2020.

76 Boesky, What We Have, 30.

77 Ibid., 30 and 158.

78 Ibid., 158.

79 Ahmed, The Cultural, pos. 4283.

80 Boesky, What We Have, 138.

81 Ibid., 312.

82 Ibid., 313.

83 Ibid., 318.

84 Boesky, “In Samarra,” 72.

85 Ibid., 71.

86 Ibid., 68.

87 Couser, Vulnerable, 168–169.

88 Price Herndl, “Virtual,” 30.

89 E.g. Hallowell and Lawton, “Negotiating.”

90 E.g. Howard et al., “Women’s.”

91 E.g. Aho and Aho, Body Matters; Carel, Phenomenology.

92 E.g. Dean, “It’s Not If.”

93 E.g. Ehlers, “Risking.”

94 E.g. Eakin, Writing; Smith and Watson, Reading.

95 Boesky, “Introduction,” 15.

96 Laranjeira, “The Role,” 472.

97 Ibid., 471.

98 Ahmed, The Cultural, pos. 1604.

99 Aho and Aho, Body Matters, pos. 1456.

100 Nayar, “Autobiogenography,” 5.

101 Boesky, “In Samarra,” 6.

102 Ahmed, The Cultural, pos. 335.

103 Boesky, What We Have, 136.

104 Ibid., 17.

105 Ibid., 29.

106 Allison, “Narrative,” 123.

107 Park-Fuller, “Narration,” 63.

108 Nayar, “Autobiogenography,” 12.

109 Boesky, What We Have, 27.

110 Conway, Ordinary, pos. 496.

111 Aho and Aho, Body Matters, pos. 1454.

112 Ahmed, The Cultural, pos. 1527.

113 Boesky, What We Have, 52.

114 Ibid., 69.

115 Ibid., 102.

116 Ibid., 103.

117 Ibid., 113.

118 Ibid., 29.

119 Ibid., 121.

120 Ibid., 122.

121 Ibid., 168.

122 Tomkins, Affect, 937.

123 Boesky, What We Have, 187.

124 Ibid., 185.

125 This issue has called the attention of analysts (Chamaly 2018; Traister 2018). The repression of anger in female socialization and women’s vindication of rage in the fourth wave of feminism are now part of the public conversation. Boesky does not problematize it in these terms. Her discussion is limited to how anger circulates (or fails to) within the family during her mother’s illness.

126 Boesky, What We Have, 169.

127 Ibid., 178.

128 Ibid., 207.

129 Ibid., 207.

130 Ibid., 217.

131 Ibid., 251.

132 Ibid., 257.

133 Ibid., 258.

134 Ibid., 3.

135 Ibid., 319.

136 Ibid., 321.

137 Rose, “Genomic,” 146.

138 Mukherjee, The Gene, 441.

139 Park-Fuller, “Narration,” 60.

140 Ibid., 61.

141 Ahall, “Affect,” 43.

142 García-Verdugo, Genética, 25.

143 Boesky, “Introduction,” 6.

144 Boesky, “Epilogue,” 240.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Grant No. PID2019-109565RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033).

Notes on contributors

Marta Fernández-Morales

Marta Fernández-Morales, PhD, is Associate Professor of literature and gender studies at the University of Oviedo, Spain. Her research explores contemporary American cultural products, in particular literature, film, and television. Her work has been published in journals such as Atlantis, Television and New Media, Feminist Theory, Auto/Biography Review, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, and American Drama. She is the author of four books and the editor of eight scholarly volumes, and a member of the research group of Medical Humanities at her home university (HEAL: https://www.unioviedo.es/heal/). More information and papers at academia.edu and researchgate.net. ORCID code 0000-0002-9116-3950. WoS code AAA-9601-2019.