Assignment Paper

Taking care of yourself is important and not selfish as many can think. Self-care is an act of self-love and means you are as kind to yourself as you are to others but it is also choosing what is best for you. In her book A Burst of Light, Audre Lorde tells us how after she was told she had liver cancer she decided to go live her life the way she wanted to and refused surgery and biopsy. “I work, I love, I rest, I see and learn. And I report.” (Lorde, 149) is Audre Lorde’s self-care list. This list highlights Lorde’s efforts to live a normal life while dealing with cancer spreading in her body. She shows that even if she is asking herself thousands of questions about how the rest of her life is going to be and how she wants the rest of her life to be, she stays strong, brave and continues to work. Self-care for her is a real form of empowerment. Lorde wants to prove, mainly to herself, that she is more powerful than cancer. A Burst of Lightis Audre Lorde’s experiences throughout cancer where she is turning her fear into fire. Lorde uses her language as apossibly in an attempt to empower, but it seems like an attempt to insult or criticize those different than her. Lorde spells certain words with a capital letter and certain ones in all lowercase like “Black” and “white”, “African” and “American”. This book demonstrates that we are all human and the differences we have are not that different. Confronting death and personal transformation led Lorde to focus on the silence surrounding illness, cancer and the lived experience of women. Moreover, Lorde compares her experience of battling with cancer to her experience of battling against racism. The comparison is effective, showing us how racism can be an attack on the cells of the body, the way in which your own body experiences itself as killing itself. A world against you can be experienced as your body turning against you. You might be worn down, worn out, by what you are required to take in.