Mourning a Breast by Jennifer Feeley

In 1989, the cult Hong Kong writer Xi Xi was diagnosed with breast cancer, and began writing to make sense of her illness and its treatment. The book she wrote was heralded as the first Chinese-language work to cast off the stigma of speaking frankly about disease, a disarmingly honest and personal account of her experience of a mastectomy and subsequent recovery.

Mourning a Breast takes a kaleidoscopic approach to the experience of illness, chronicling the author’s days in all their variety: not only her evolving relationship to her body and medicine, but also literature and movies, food and clothing, friendship and solitude. Xi Xi describes her experiences with humour and quiet attentiveness – in swimming pool changing rooms, at tai chi classes in the park, in conversations with friends. All the while, she explores the arcades, streetscapes and skyscrapers of Hong Kong, offering a portrait of a city full of life, on the verge of enormous change. Now translated into English for the first time, Mourning a Breast is a radical, generous and wise book about creation in the face of grief.