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The Undying
The Undying: Pain, vulnerability, mortality, medicine, art, time, dreams, data, exhaustion, cancer, and care | Anne Boyer
18 posts | 10 read | 10 to read
Award-winning poet and essayist Anne Boyer delivers a one-of-a-kind meditation on pain, vulnerability, mortality, medicine, art, time, space, exhaustion, and economicssharing her true story of coping with cancer, both the illness and the industry, in The Undying. A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain dolorists, the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of pink ribbon culture while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others. A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious. Includes black-and-white illustrations
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Bevita
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Bailedbailed

I thought I‘d enjoy this but found it tedious and depressing. Couldn‘t finish.

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honeydew_reader
Pickpick

I read this too quickly and will definitely need to go back to this over and over with time. It's like peerng into a cauldron of someone's thoughts. bits and fragments that resonate but are very dense at times. Though I haven't had cancer, it speaks a lot to similar pains for people with any disability.

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Lindy
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sharread
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#bookoutlethaul #bookoutlet has some 2020 Pulitzer prize winners for great prices, The Undying and The End of the Myth.

#influentialwomen #reading #read #pulitzerprize #pulitzer #TBR #ilovebooks #readathon

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RebeccaH
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Pickpick

I just finished this book last night. Ugh, it‘s so brilliant, weird, unclassifiable, angry, dark, bewildering, I love it. And it just won the Pulitzer!!!

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RebeccaH
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What I‘m reading next.

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Lindy
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Well, even though I haven't been able to concentrate on printed text for two weeks on account of anxiety over the pandemic, I was able to find solace in many hours of audiobooks plus some graphic novels. Based on the comments I've been seeing on Litsy and elsewhere, I know I'm not the only habitual reader who has found it hard to settle with a book.

kspenmoll Dame experience here! Take care and sending you ❤️🤗 4y
Megabooks Great month! 4y
Lindy @kspenmoll Thanks so much. 😊 4y
Lindy @Megabooks Thanks. May April bring better reading horizons to us both. 🌻 4y
40 likes4 comments
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Lindy
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Pickpick

This #audiobook is a powerful, poetic revolt against misogyny, pink ribbon commerce & the injustices of the health care system in the USA, where a woman dies of breast cancer every 13 minutes. Diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, Boyer experienced “the curative forces of medical decimation.” She writes: “I survived, yet the ideological regime of cancer means that to call myself a survivor still feels like a betrayal of the dead.”

Lindy PS. I forgot to note that the audiobook narrator is Amy Finegan. She‘s excellent. 4y
Centique Wow. 😳I really do have to read this. Thanks for the inspiring review Lindy. 4y
43 likes2 comments
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Lindy
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“It's like the condition of lostness is, when it comes to being a person, what finally makes us real.”

[It‘s become obvious that what resonates with me these days is words about living with uncertainty. Go, Anne Boyer!]

Art by my sweetie, Laurie MacFayden. I‘ve been spending hours staring at her work on the walls of our house.

Leftcoastzen Beautiful! 4y
Cathythoughts Yes I agree @Leftcoastzen , beautiful! 4y
lahousewyfe Inspiring piece! 4y
Lindy @lahousewyfe Yes, we are fragile beings. There‘s a comfort in accepting that fact. 4y
38 likes5 comments
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Lindy
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The great orbs of the unsaid still float through the air.

(Art: Yayoi Kusama)

BookishTrish ❤️❤️❤️ Yayoi Kusama 4y
BookishTrish I have her edition of Alice‘s Adventures in Wonderland 4y
Centique Beautiful! 4y
37 likes4 comments
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Lindy
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The only time I leave my apartment is to take walks alone. On one of these walks, I forgot myself, petted a large black poodle, then remained in fear of my own hands for a mile.

PurpleTulipGirl The psychological effects of this will leave lasting effects. It‘s so easy to be afraid of everything and everyone now. 4y
Lindy @PurpleTulipGirl Yes, there will certainly be after effects. The quote is from when the author was going through chemo for triple negative breast cancer. It‘s striking that her fears have become commonplace now. 4y
Centique @Lindy hey that‘s the same type of breast cancer I had. I might have to read this book! I didn‘t think about stopping from patting dogs at the time (during chemo) - but then again I did catch a cold that turned into a hellish sinus infection and had massive antibiotics - so I wasn‘t doing a great job of distancing and sterilising was I ? Eek 😳 Much more careful during this season 🙏 4y
Lindy @Centique This book is outstanding! I‘m trying to formulate a review while being totally bowled over by its eloquence and power. I will probably share more quotes, so I will tag you in those. 4y
47 likes1 stack add4 comments
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Lindy
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Lots of sidewalk inspirational messages on my #audiowalk today. 😊

KathyR I find the difference in pandemic mottos interesting. New Zealanders tell each other to "kia kaha" (stay strong), which I prefer. Strength is required to show kindness, to resist fear, to be patient. Kia kaha! 4y
Lindy @KathyR 👍 4y
47 likes2 comments
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Lindy
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The path to my dye studio (aka garage). It‘s above freezing today so I decided to mordant some wool. #audiocrafting

Megabooks Omg, it is 80 F today and I am dying! Send snow!!! I am not meant for the South during menopause! 4y
Lindy @Megabooks I would send some if I could. 😘 4y
Exbrarian 90F In Houston today. Inside with the AC on. 4y
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Lindy @Exbrarian 😊🌞👍 4y
Sleepswithbooks I want to jump in it!!!! 4y
Lindy @Stacypatrice 😁☃️ 4y
53 likes1 stack add6 comments
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spinedestroyer
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spinedestroyer
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this book is a marvel

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spinedestroyer
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excerpt from Anne Boyer‘s book “The Undying” published in the New Yorker (the piece is called “What cancer takes away”). i hadn‘t heard of her before, but now i want to read everything she‘s written. it‘s so true about fiction being about not being ill, without knowing it. if i wasn‘t broke i‘d run out and buy this.