Rehearsals for Dying: Digressions on Love and Cancer

Deena stepped out of the shower and opened her towel in the steam. "Does my breast look weird?''

These words irrevocably changed the lives of writer Ariel Gore and her wife, Deena. As they descend into a world of doctors and tests, medications and insurance, sickness and treatments and hope and pain and more, they discover just how little they truly knew about the reality of breast cancer, in spite of the awareness campaigns and hyper-visible pink ribbons. Along the way, Ariel Gore does what she always does no matter how difficult or personal the subject: she writes about it.

With keen insights, empathy, and humor, Ariel Gore braids together the story of Deena's and her lives, narratives from other people with embodied experience of breast cancer, literary reflections on cancer and illness, and chapters delving into the history of breast cancer treatment and the cynical corporations in the $200 billion industry that capitalize on and profit from breast cancer screenings and treatments. Rehearsals for Dying investigates and challenges everything we think we know about breast cancer. It goes beyond awareness to knowledge and reality, presenting a rich, nuanced, heartbreaking, and hopeful portrait of what it is to be diagnosed with, treat, and live with breast cancer in the 21st century.