Ode to Rose Kushner, Who Made Breast Cancer Political (as Nixon lurked in the background)

• In Event: Embodied Jewish gender histories: Feminist, reflexive, creative encounters in the archives and in the field

Abstract

This reading of an original prose poem brings to light the life and work of Rose Rehert Kushner (1929-1990)—one of many American Ashkenazi women diagnosed with breast cancer, the first to become a fierce advocate for herself and others. I am an American Ashkenazi creative writer who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007.

I wrote a chronicle of my treatment (The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, University of Iowa Press 2009), but this prose poem is new work. As is much of my writing, this new piece is literary in style, personal in subject matter, feminist, and reliant on history and research. It intertwines the story of Kushner with that of my own and other Jewish cancer patients. She is my mother’s generation, was an orphan at ten of Yiddish-speaking immigrants, a writer, medical researcher, refugee advocate. Her own cancer propelled her into activism and research. When she discovered a breast lump in 1974, the standard medical procedure was to anesthetize the patient, perform a biopsy and then immediately remove the breast. She fought to make the biopsy and mastectomy two separate surgeries, allowing patient input. She also successfully fought against the Halsted radical mastectomy protocol, in which surgeons automatically removed lymph nodes and chest-wall muscles along with the malignant breast. She fought for less debilitating surgery, and won—for herself and others

Thirty-three years later, I had a mastectomy with two lymph nodes removed. They were clear, so the (female) surgeon did not remove more. I never had lymphedema (arm swelling). Grounded briefly in the technical aspects of surgery, this piece will provide examples of Kushner’s stubbornness, public education and advocacy, Congressional testimony--as well as her criticism of President Gerald Ford for declaring that his wife Betty would have the Halsted procedure. One of the reasons for the disclosure of her cancer was to take the spotlight from her husband’s pardon of the disgraced Richard Nixon. My own growing awareness of the politics of breast cancer and “pinkwashing” will form another strand of this braid, along with feminist analysis of the cancered Jewish female body.

Author

• S.L. Sandi Wisenberg