The often-referenced opening of Susan Sontag’s book Illness as Metaphor describes a dualistic reality, in which everyone belongs to either the metaphorical kingdom of the healthy or the kingdom of the sick. All people, Sontag says, desire to belong to the former, and all will eventually fall into the latter. This metaphor is powerful, but it sets up an equally powerful– and therefore limiting– dichotomy.

This is not unique; the “mainstream” narrative of cancer in western medicine demands a multitude of dichotomies with which to organize the world. The one Sontag employs is that of the sick versus the well, which when extended to its furthest reaches becomes survival versus death. We might also consider the normal versus the abnormal or the whole person versus the “cripple”.

However, these dichotomies do not represent single states of being but axes within the multidimensional reality of human existence. For example, Lochlan Jain outlines a tension in the time between when a tumor develops and when it is discovered, a time in which the patient is simultaneously ill and well. Chemotherapy carries a tension of its own, for although it can be an effective treatment, it is sometimes unclear whether patients have died from the illness or the cure. There are also the lingering side effects from treatments, ranging from scars to cognitive impairment to secondary neoplasms, which are rarely discussed but may shape a large part of a patient’s life after their cancer.

This website is an archive of a broad range of narrative works which navigate those gray areas that dominant cancer narratives demand we ignore, as well as academic works which supplement the ideas brought forward by the narrative works. To curate it, I searched beyond the binary of sick vs well, death vs survival, etc. and into the messier, more uncertain aspects of cancer. These narratives will primarily address the uncertainty of remission, the side effects of treatment, and the disconnect between the experience of being a “cancer survivor” and being a “well” or “whole” person.

The site’s structure is intended to mimic the pathways of discovery through which one might discover an alternative cancer narrative. Below is a gallery showcasing the primary narrative works. Clicking on an image will bring you to a post about the work, including a summary, analysis, and key outtakes. Linked at the bottom are a series of thematic categories on key subjects, which lead to a collection of academic works and other narratives on the same theme. These categories, along with a short discussion of their importance and a list of all the works included in them, can also be accessed through the table of contents.