Mourning a Breast - by XI XI (Paperback)

About the Book

"By Xi Xi, part of the first generation of writers raised in Hong Kong, a wise and amiably written book of autobiographical fiction on the author's experience with breast cancer-from diagnosis to treatment to recovery-and her passage from a life lived through the mind into a life lived through the body. In 1990, the Hong Kong cult classic writer Xi Xi was diagnosed with breast cancer and began writing in order to make sense of her diagnosis and treatment. Mourning a Breast, published two and a half years later, is a disarmingly honest and deeply personal account of the author's experience of a mastectomy and of her subsequent recovery. The book opens with her gently rolling up a swimsuit. A beginning swimmer, she loves going to the pool, eavesdropping on conversations in the changing room, shopping for swimsuits. As this routine pleasure is revoked, the small loss stands in for the greater one. But Xi Xi's mourning begins to take shape as a form of activism. In a conversational, even humorous, manner, she describes her previous blinkered life of the mind before she came into her body and learned its language. Addressing her reader as frankly and unashamedly as an old friend, she coaxes and confesses, confronts society's failings, and advocates for a universal literacy of the body. Mourning a Breast was heralded as the first Chinese language book to cast off the stigma of writing about illness and to expose the myths associated with breast cancer. A radical and generous book about creating in the midst of mourning"--

Book Synopsis

By Xi Xi, part of the first generation of writers raised in Hong Kong, a wise and amiably written book of autobiographical fiction on the author's experience with breast cancer--from diagnosis to treatment to recovery--and her passage from a life lived through the mind into a life lived through the body.

In 1989, the acclaimed Hong Kong writer Xi Xi was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her semi-autobiographical novel Mourning a Breast is a disarmingly honest and inventive account of the author's experience of a mastectomy and of her subsequent recovery. The book opens with her putting away a bathing suit. As the routine pleasure of swimming is revoked, the small loss stands in for the greater one. But Xi Xi's mourning begins to take shape as a form of activism. Addressing her reader as frankly and unashamedly as an old friend, she describes what she is going through; finds consolation in art, literature, and cinema; and advocates for a universal literacy of the body. Mourning a Breast was heralded as one of the first Chinese-language books to cast off the stigma of writing about illness and to expose the myths associated with breast cancer. It is a radical novel about creating in the midst of mourning.

Review Quotes

2024 NBCC Awards Longlist: Barrios Book in Translation Prize

"This superb work of autofiction from Xi Xi (1937-2022), which was originally published in 1992, melds an account of the author's breast cancer with a reflection on the subjective nature of translation.... Xi Xi's matter-of-fact prose and in-depth analysis are deeply satisfying. This is a must." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Xi Xi's fascinating imagination and brave avant-garde spirit make her an important and distinctive figure in last century's Sinophone literature. Her knowledge, experience, and generosity offer unique humanitarian value to her writing. I highly recommend her." --Mo Yan

"[Mourning a Breast] is a genre bender in the tradition of W.G. Sebald, but also a pioneering work of fiction about the body and disease. Ingenious in conception, free and imaginative in execution, the book challenges the conventional form of the novel." --Ha Jin

"The breast is the epicenter, where the complexities of society, literature, translation, personal care, history, art, and identity converge and transmute into a deeply felt and profoundly original narrative. Mourning a Breast is the story of Xi Xi's own experience, translated by Jennifer Feeley with precision and a subtle undertone of celebration, a generous invitation to navigate the depths of womanhood, of cancer, with humor and unflinching honesty." --Xuan Juliana Wang

"Mourning a Breast engages an innovative mix of writing drawn from multiple genres and disciplines, all centered on the exploration of an unwelcome sign--a tumor inside a breast. Xi Xi transports us from the technique of stitching skin to the process of splicing film for an experimental movie, and moves freely between her post-surgery feelings about her renovated bathroom and a public debate on the architectural design of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Xi Xi would be delighted to read Feeley's attentive and even playful translation, especially given that translation is one of the book's key motifs. A brilliant reader of her own illness, Xi Xi regards a literary work, a person's body, and the earth itself in need of continuous translation and interpretation." --Dorothy Tse

"As a patient, she will read--and share with her readers--factual accounts of the disease she is afflicted with. As an artist, she will develop intellectual pathways between treatment, recovery, and culture, creatively processing, or pausing from, what is happening to her body." --Marsha McDonald, Cha Journal

"Xi Xi guides the reader through the Hong Kong healthcare system, but her book also has universal themes about health and illness, navigating the unknown on one's own, and finding community in places one would never expect." --Susan Blumberg-Kason, Cha Journal

"Mourning a Breast resists the conventions of the breast cancer memoir. Rather than plotting a singular, heroic journey between biopsy and remission, punctuated by platitudes and metaphors of war, Xi Xi learns to listen.... She turns to her love of languages and literature, as well as care from friends and community, for support. Along the way, she learns another language -- that of the body." --Mimi Cheng, The Washington Post

"This book, as they say, contains multitudes.... Mourning a Breast goes to a number of disparate places, from riffs on other works of literature to puckish asides offering directions to readers who'd prefer to skip around." -- Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

""Mourning a Breast is at times disarmingly ludic and formally inventive, as Xi proceeds through a non-linear accumulation of essayistic chapters. From poetic lists and encyclopaedic entries to long narrative paragraphs and rapid-fire dialogue, each chapter finds a form to suit the book's wide-ranging content" -- Emma Cohen, TLS

"Mourning a Breast is a guide: to breast cancer, to grief and joy, to myths and stories; to Hong Kong, to Xi Xi, and to yourself, through the mirror of her life." --Michelle Chan Schmidt, Full Stop

"Newley and elegantly translated by Jennifer Feeley, it offers a refreshing corrective to the tendency in contemporary English language writing- novels and nonfiction alike - to delve relentlessly into the subjective." --Lily Meyer, The New Republic

About the Author

Xi Xi (1937-2022) was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong in 1950. Over the course of her career, she wrote several books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, as well as numerous screenplays and newspaper and magazine columns. In 2019, she became the first writer from Hong Kong to win Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, and her literary career was the subject of the 2015 documentary film My City. Upon its initial publication in Taiwan in 1992, Mourning a Breast was named by the China Times as one of the best ten books of the year.

Jennifer Feeley is the translator of Xi Xi's Mourning a Breast, Not Written Words: Selected Poetry of Xi Xi, and Carnival of Animals: Xi Xi's Animal Poems, as well as Chen Jiatong's White Fox series and Wong Yi's Cantonese chamber opera libretto Women Like Us. Her forthcoming translations include Lau Yee-Wa's Tongueless and Xi Xi's My City. She is the recipient of the 2017 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize and a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship.