Negotiating the Crisis of Trauma and Pain as Transformational: Exploring Cancer Narratives in Contemporary Culture

Abstract

Life writing has captured pleasant experiences and human sorrows, including pain and recovery from disasters and traumatic challenges. Adversities are a reality of life and shape human existence; from them arise perspectives on survival and transformation. Illness and disease have accompanied humans throughout life, both individually and within communities. Writers of all ages have found a unique place in literature through physical and psychological struggles with illness. The present generation of life experiences continues to reflect survival through innumerable patterns of struggle, from pandemics to individual illnesses like cancer. Cancer has found a platform for discussion in literature, medical texts, medical testimonies, and representations of doctors’ experiences. However, literature has also produced a new form of writing called cancer narratives. This paper studies the different interpretations and truths of cancer as a transformational illness in the context of Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor(1979), and also with the understandings seen through impacted individuals and the social unit over time.