Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development

by Vandana Shiva

Overview

Janet Reibstein's mother and two aunts grew up in New Jersey amid a close-knit, extended Jewish family set apart only by a genetic propensity for breast cancer. Over fifty years, the disease claims Janet's two aunts, then her mother, then a cousin. Finally Janet must face the far-reaching decision of whether to undergo a preemptive mastectomy herself. A history of the disease in America as well as a story of sisters, mothers and daughters, and the men who love them, Staying Alive is ultimately a tale of extraordinary strength and of the power of love in survival.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780862328238
Publisher:	Zed Books
Publication date:	01/15/1989
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Vandana Shiva was one of India's leading physicists and is now a leading environmental campaigner, the winner of the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize and the author of several books, including Soil not Oil (2008), Earth Democracy (2005) and Stolen Harvest (2001).

Editorial Reviews

"Staying Alive is a woman's book-inspiring, gripping, compassionate, unflinching. A family story, an exquisitely drawn portrait of a mother and daughter, and the story of a woman's courageous decision to free herself from a history of breast cancer. I could not put it down."
-Carol Gilligan, author of The Birth of Pleasure

"Compelling ... What keeps this from being mere medical melodrama is the author's warm, meticulous reconstruction of her relatives' lives, including her tangled relationship with her beloved mother. A tragic but ultimately hopeful story." -Kirkus Reviews

"There are many fine stories here-about dying with dignity and with disability-and about the courage to sacrifice vanity in order to live without fear." -Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher