Verena Stefan’s breast cancer narrative, written 32 years after her cult feminist book Häutungen (1975), for which she is mainly known in Germanist circles.
Written by a mature woman, this is an atypical illness narrative worth including in investigations of the genre (which is dominated by white, middle-class, heterosexual writers).
Challenging for students in that it is highly poetic and weaves Swiss-German, French, and English words into the German text; rewarding for its feminist take on illness – and migration (Stefan moved to Canada in the 1990s) – from the margins.
Can be read in excerpts as the individual chapters are short – many can stand by themselves.
EGS 