{"id":64964,"date":"2009-09-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-professors-latest-called-back-replies-to-cancer-return-to-life\/"},"modified":"2009-09-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T00:00:00","slug":"uri-professors-latest-called-back-replies-to-cancer-return-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2009\/09\/uri-professors-latest-called-back-replies-to-cancer-return-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 professor\u2019s latest Called Back replies to cancer, return to life"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 September 14, 2009\u2014Mary Cappello, a professor of English at the 溏心vlog免费B站, was planning a national reading tour for her latest book in the late spring of 2007 when she felt a lump in her breast. <\/p>\n


\n\t \u201cThe moment the suspicious looks start flying among the technicians in mammography you can pretty well tell that your life is going to change,\u201d recalls Cappello about entering the often harrowing world of medicine.<\/p>\n


\n\tRather than blink, Cappello looks at her breast cancer straight on with a poet\u2019s eye for incongruity and an intellect\u2019s heart for meaning. She translates those experiences into her newest book, Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life, just published by Alyson books. The book is part memoir, part meditative, and wholly absorbing.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe book follows Cappello\u2019s diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, but it does something different than simply reproduce the standard, neatly packaged redemption narrative. \u201cI hope my approach opens things up rather than closes off aspects of the treatment and disease that we\u2019d rather not discuss, admit, or meditate on,\u201d she says. \u201cTo put this another way: What happens inside of the treatment regime is entirely expected, but what happens inside of the book is not\u2014and this establishes both an intellectual and emotional suspense in the book.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tA master weaver of words, the author explains the thread of meaning in the book\u2019s title. Called Back is Emily Dickinson\u2019s epitaph, she says. \u201cBut the phrase also ramifies literally with the shock of being called back into mammography (maybe every woman\u2019s greatest fear), and on the pervasive possibility of being called back again even after cancer\u2019s ostensible treatment regime has ended. When I got my diagnosis, my friend, the lesbian writer, Barbara Morris, said, \u2018You\u2019ve been called to be in your body\u2019\u2014that stuck with me, it was a sentence I wanted to understand and meditate on, so it has that kind of \u201ccalling\u201d in mind as well, the way that a cancer diagnosis calls one to be in one\u2019s body. But it also means to suggest, the necessity for a writer willfully to re-call the experience, to call it back, in order both to transform the experience and make it available to a community of readers.\u201d <\/p>\n


\n\tHer tone is warm, furious, smart, ironic in short– human\u2014a contrast with the \u201ctone\u201d put in front of cancer patients in forms of \u201cmuzak, infantilizing ditties or moralizing instruction manuals that make one responsible for one\u2019s cancer. But it\u2019s easy to demonize the medical world,\u201d the author says. \u201cThere\u2019s also a popular cultural world that is very much invested in cancer being talked about in only certain ways (and especially breast cancer), according to certain narrative structures, with certain pre-given words and with it a whole ethos and ideology of acknowledgement (or blindness), treatment, and cure.\u201d<\/p>\n

A diagnosis of cancer is a moment of legibility, but in most cases the cancer is not new, explains Cappello. Her cancer, for instance, was estrogen positive and her2\/neu negative, the kind of cancer that takes at least eight years for a tumor to reach the size she had in her body\u2014between one and two centimeters. It is, she says, a garden-variety type of cancer.<\/p>\n


\n\tAn interesting choice of words for a wordsmith whose passion for flowers compelled the 46-year old professor on that day of diagnosis (June 5, 2007) to invite friends to accompany her to Blithewold Garden in Bristol. \u201cThose gardens are what I wanted and needed. I guess it was my attempt to do something life-affirming in light of my having to face certain precariousness, the newness and uncertainty, the fact of my mortality. \u201c<\/p>\n


\n\tTo mark the one-year anniversary of her diagnosis, she went with friends to The Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Mass. This year, it was raining, so she and friends traveled to Harvard\u2019s Natural History Museum to view a magnificent collection of flowers made out of glass.<\/p>\n


\n\tCappello has a full schedule of readings this fall, including readings at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Kingston and Providence campuses. A schedule of readings and appearances follow. For a detailed listing, go to http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/home.php?#\/group.php?gid=88922660977&ref=ts<\/p>\n


\nCALLED BACK by Mary Cappello

\nFALL 2009 Schedule of Readings and Appearances

\nBorders Books

\nSaturday, Sept. 19 at 2 p.m.

\n116 Bangor Mall Blvd.

\n Bangor, Maine<\/p>\n


\nColumbia College

\nFriday, Oct. 2, 5:30 p.m.

\nChicago, Illinois<\/p>\n


\nNYC LGBT Center in conjunction with The Susan Komen Foundation

\nWednesday, Oct. 7

\nReception at 6:30; event begins at 7 p.m.

\n$10 admission; fee waived for students with ID

\n208 West 13th S. New York, NY <\/p>\n


\nRobin\u2019s Bookstore

\nSaturday, Oct. 10, 4 p.m.

\nPhiladelphia, Pa. <\/p>\n


\nWriting the LGBT Italian American Experience

\nMonday, Oct. 12, 7 p.m.

\nBarnes and Noble Bookstore

\n2289 Broadway at 82nd Street, NYC <\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站

\nWednesday, Oct. 14, 4 p.m.

\nSwan Hall Auditorium

\n60 Upper College Road

\nKingston, R.I. <\/p>\n


\nThe Big \u2018C\u2019: Living Fully, Living Healthy

\nThursday, Oct. 15, 5 to 9 p.m.; Reading and Signing at 7 pm

\nArt and Informational Exhibit, Gallery Reception

\n溏心vlog免费B站 Feinstein Providence, Campus

\n80 Washington St.

\nProvidence, R.I. <\/p>\n


\nThe Center at Five Bridge Inn

\nSunday, Oct. 18, 1 p.m.

\n152 Pine St.

\nRehoboth, Mass.<\/p>\n


\nUniversity of Vermont College of Medicine

\nFriday, Oct. 23, time TBA (early afternoon)

\nBurlington, Vt.<\/p>\n


\nTwelfth Annual Vermont Breast Cancer Conference

\nSaturday, Oct. 24, 9 a.m. to 9:45 a.m.

\nVermont Cancer Center

\nSheraton Burlington Hotel & Conference Center

\nSouth Burlington, Vt.<\/p>\n


\nJersey City University

\nmid-November

\nJersey City, N.J. <\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 Feinstein Providence Campus

\nmid-December

\nin Professor Naomi Mandel\u2019s \u201cLiterature and Medicine Class\u201d<\/p>\n


\nYale University School of Medicine

\nThursday, Dec. 3, 5 p.m.

\nThe Program for Humanities in Medicine

\nHoward Spiro Lecture Series

\nNew Haven, Conn.<\/p>\n


\nGiovanni\u2019s Room

\nTBA late December, coinciding with MLA

\nand part of GLQ Caucus Celebrations

\nGiovanni\u2019s Room

\n345 South 12th Street

\n Center City, Pa. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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