Lorde narrates her experience with breast cancer and mastectomy with the purpose of contextualizing her ordeal within concerns shared by many cancer-surviving women about the meaning of the illness and its impact on female identity.

Lorde was a Black lesbian poet—an identity that she repeatedly mentions in the text to help the reader understand the marginalized context from which she speaks. At the time in which she writes this memoir, Lorde was 44 years old, had a partner named Frances, two children, and close friendships with numerous women friends, including authors Adrienne Rich and Michelle Cliff. Lorde discovered a lump in her right breast on Labor Day in 1978 during a monthly breast exam.

Frances is Lorde’s partner, who spends time with her before and after the mastectomy operation. Lorde describes her support as “as steady warm light close by to the island within which [she] had to struggle alone” (27). Several times in the text, Lorde compares Frances’s likeness to that of a sunflower. Frances supports Lorde’s decision to have a mastectomy, believing it to be the most sensible course of action. The healthcare workers who attend to Lorde acknowledge Frances as her partner.