Janie Starr
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By: Kota Pr
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6
Average rating: 5.0 of 5
The artist as a middle-aged woman confronting cancer 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.
In her inspiring and beautifully written book, Janie Starr takes us along on the journey that began when she found out she had lymphoma. Not only does she do battle with this very grave form of cancer, she also learns how to boogie, or rather, to boogie even better. This memoir gives some attention to the multiple and excruciating therapies that currently constitute cancer treatment, but much more attention is given to her search for self-knowledge through a variety of alternative strategies that can be as essential as radiation and chemotherapy for restoring health. She exposes a medical profession where some practice compassion, but many more project omnipotence and omniscience for lack of the words or feelings to deal with potentially terminal illness. Relations with those from her various communities (her parents, her family, her neighbors, her exercise and activist groups) are essential to her story. Her finely turned vignettes reveal the different ways men and women deal with cancer, as well as the variety of responses one can expect from friends, acquaintances and children. When the medical treatments end, the self-exploration continues. Ms. Starr writes eloquently about the relief of having survived, living with the fear of recurrence, and the continual questioning that facing cancer inevitably brings. Finally, this book is perhaps above all about becoming a writer, a sort of portrait of the artist as a middle-aged woman confronting cancer. This should raise a question for everyone who reads this book: Why wait for illness before learning to live life fully? Janie Starr clearly emerged from her illness as a dancer and an artist.
Editorial Review:
We all hit a brick wall at some time in our lives. Starr's rose up inside her body in the form of a cancerous tumor lurking behind her chest wall and growing fast. With rare honesty, humor, and shine, Starr recounts her early terror and ultimate triumph as she scaled that wall and danced her jig on top. Cancer has crept into most peoples lives one way or another, but we don't have to be a member of the tribe in order to resonate with Bone Marrow Boogie.
It is as much about love, family, and community, and about staying full present and alive during a mid-life crisis as it is a story of illness and recovery. It could have been divorce, remarriage, building a home, or even winning the lottery.
Big events call for a big response, and for Starr that included walking the talk and living to tell her story. She wrote because it satisfied her, it brought her into relationship with others, and because she thought it might make a difference to the rest of us. She got that right.
