TOW #13: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

            Finishing the second half of When Breath Becomes Air was like completing a large project. I didn’t know what to spend my time with now. This book had consumed majority of my time although every minute that I invested was worth it. Kalanithi’s ability to display his most intimate and personal emotions into the pages was viewed highly by not only myself but also by many in the reading community. As he is a doctor, he is exposed to countless of individuals with similar cases as his. His exclusive perspective into the doctor who slowly degrades into a weak patient was an extremely intriguing foundation of his memoir.

            Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon who, due to his sudden diagnosis of lung cancer towards the end of his seven-year residency, began to shift into the position of a patient whom he had treated all his life. With this disease, he began to see his gradual transition from “doctor to patient, from actor to acted upon, from subject to direct object” (Kalanithi 180). He recalls his experience as a medical student, knowing nothing and often end up asking patients to explain their disease and treatments to him, but as he grew more experienced as a doctor, he never expected patients to make decisions themselves since he bore responsibility for the patient. And through his sickening body, he only now realized that he “was trying to do the same thing now, [his] doctor-self remaining responsible for [his] patient-self” (Kalanithi 182-183). His various viewpoints in the perspective of various roles that he played in the course of his lifetime aided in a book with a great amount of substance, giving a peek into the scenarios he found himself in. When he was taken off a drug that he shouldn’t have been, he consulted a young medical student about it. However, the inexperienced student began arguing with him, as he “could see that in Brad’s eyes I was not a patient, I was a problem: a box to be checked off” (Kalanithi 187). This is a specific example in which he got an insight into the minds of his fellow hospital mates and how they treat their patients as they got more and more experienced. Giving these various perspectives allowed Kalanithi to appeal to his audience, giving insight into the medical world that many do not know.

TOW #12: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

            When I was finished with Carson’s Silent Spring, I felt drawn towards a nonfiction book with more of a storyline rather than the previous book’s evidence-driven layout. After surfing on the almighty Google search-engine, I encountered a book that had recently released in January of this year. In short, Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air is a memoir focused around his diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer. At the young age of thirty-six with his ten years of neurosurgeon training almost at its completion and his wife pregnant with their first child, Kalanithi describes his journey of transitioning from a doctor to a patient holding onto his last breath. The book is divided into two chapters which symbolizes the “before and after” of his life after learning about his diagnosis. Although I’ve read only the first half of this memoir, I am completely absorbed in the story.

            Throughout Kalanithi’s recount of his personal life and events, he interweaves life lessons that he had learned from his experience in the medical field as a neurosurgeon. One lesson that had the greatest lasting impact on me was to follow my path. Although he had been meaning to pursue a career in literature in the future, Kalanithi decided to stray away from his undergraduate degree in literature at Stanford and graduate degree in philosophy at Cambridge to answer his “calling” in medicine. This was when he was studying the work of Walt Whitman for his thesis. After this assignment, Kalanithi realized that he was becoming “increasingly certain that [he] had little desire to continue in literary studies, whose main preoccupations had begun to strike [him] as overly political and averse to science” (40). Because of this sudden revelation, he became aware that “[he] didn’t quite fit in an English Department” (41). Although his decision meant that he had to set aside literature, he was satisfied with the idea that it would “allow [him] a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay” (42).

            Kalanithi’s late response to his true passion encouraged me to believe that my own “calling” will not arrive according to my will. This idea relieved me as I came to realize that I had been stressing about my impending future and my potential career. Instead of unnecessarily preoccupying my time into forging a “perfect” future, I decided to just let my curiosity lead me to wherever it may wish.

TOW #11: Ain't I A Woman by Sojourner Truth

            The first time I came across this monumental speech was when I was online shopping a couple of years ago, searching for a plain graphic tee. As I was scrolling the page of a shop that I’ve found myself revisiting countless times, I was confronted by a hit-you-in-the-face yellow shirt with an unrecognizable (at the time) quote that read, “Ain’t I A Woman?” Of course I had to buy it as I loved the rhetoric. Little Bo, as curious as she could be, had to know where this saying originated, and with a little research (quick search on Google), I doused myself in the short yet poignant delivery of words that still affects me today. As I have never really delved deeper into the meaning behind Truth’s purpose nor have I considered Truth’s audience, I was ecstatic when I was assigned her text to analyze.

            Sojourner Truth had delivered her speech to the Women’s Convention as she addressed her primarily female audience about the inequalities that both women and African Americans faced during the time period when slavery was prevalent. In order to make aware of the wrongs of gender inequality, Truth utilizes personal experiences and repetition of rhetorical questions. When a man claims that “women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and have the best place everywhere,” Truth juxtaposes his ignorant declaration by exclaiming that no one has ever performed these chivalrous manners for her, saying, “nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me the best place!” As a subject of both minority being a black woman, Truth establishes her credibility by recounting her own experience in discrimination.

            As Truth spoke with anger and resentment, she repeated the increasingly impactful phrase, “and ain’t I a woman?” As I’ve mentioned before, this speech was delivered to the Women’s Convention, an event in which the audience were predominantly female. Taking this into account, she brought the rhythm of the repetition to a close with an explicit account of her life: “I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?” By purposely ending this section with a lasting impression of her position as an African American woman in the midst of slavery, Truth was successful in relaying the immoral wrongs of inequality. As her audience were probably mothers with their own loving children, Truth allowed her audience to relate with her on a personal and emotional level.