Jean Hannah Edelstein is talking to me about her breasts. This isn’t how it seems. The British-American writer is speaking from her home in New Jersey and explaining how she came to write Breasts, a short memoir in which the form reflects the content, as underlined by the subtitle: “A relatively brief relationship”. Edelstein charts the relationship with her body in three distinct chapters on sex, food and cancer; the result is a cathartic and powerful work that clocks in at under 100 pages.
She started work on the book while recovering from a mastectomy. During that period of convalescence, the writer started to wonder, “What was the point of all that? What are breasts even for?” She considers writing a “coping strategy” and has done so since childhood, therefore there was little doubt such a traumatic experience would one day be transformed into prose. When Edelstein was first diagnosed with cancer, her immediate thought was, “I don’t want to write about this”, in the full knowledge that she would. With hindsight, she translates that initial reaction as, “I don’t want this to be happening.”
Breasts is an angry book, a pointed response to the indignities Edelstein has faced as a result of her body since her teens. It is also funny, moving and powerful. The first chapter, Sex, is a portrait of the artist as a young woman and focuses on the way in which she was praised for “self-control and modesty”. The book is, quite rightly, a conscious attempt to produce something “uncontrolled and immodest”, even though that meant pushing against her natural impulses. When she had finished writing, Edelstein felt exhausted and had come to the conclusion that she does not want to write any more memoir.
It is easy to see why. The author’s first book, published in 2018, was an account of moving back to the United States after 14 years abroad upon learning her father was dying. He died six weeks later and six months after that Edelstein learned she carries the gene of the cancer that killed him. One can understand why she might not be in a hurry to turn all this into a trilogy any time soon. She has, gratefully, “run out of experiences”.
While she was going through the ordeal, Edelstein reacted in a typically Jewish manner and made jokes in an attempt to make other people in her life feel better:
“Breast cancer is a cancer that affects women and often mothers. We are often in the position of being the cruise director of our families. We’re the ones looking after everyone’s mood and wellbeing, trying to cheer everyone up.”
Edelstein’s own mother is Scottish but the author grew up in the United States since her father was an American Jew from deep in the heart of Philip Roth country with ancestors who escaped the pogroms. With just the one Jewish parent, the writer views herself as a “halfie” or, better still, in her husband’s words, a “Silver Jew”. She celebrated the holidays with her family growing up but never attended Hebrew school and considers herself culturally Jewish above all else. “I’ve always been a big storyteller and that comes particularly from Jewish culture… There was something about the way my family operated in terms of connecting true stories and literature.”
While Edelstein’s father may not have been observant, he had an inherent generosity that she feels represents the best of Judaism. When he came across somebody experiencing a problem, his signature phrase was: “We’re working on it”. She read that maxim as meaning “nothing was so bad that you couldn’t try and make it better”, a Jewish approach to the world that has been essential over the past few centuries of human civilisation and the past few years of the writer’s life.
During that period, with a pandemic backdrop, Edelstein had two children, relocated from Brooklyn to the Newark suburbs (“the Essex of New Jersey”), survived cancer, was featured on This American Life and discarded a novel she was working on, all while working a full-time job in tech. She feels this last point is crucial and stresses the fact that creatives in 2025 need to have other jobs, something others do their best to disguise.
She is, however, a remarkable writer. Edelstein’s incredible recall extends not only to her own life but also to other people’s and friends are often reminded of incidents they’ve long since forgotten. She is aware this makes her a kind of custodian for the memories of those closest to her but she feels writers and readers of memoir should always keep one thing in mind: “A biography is a record of fact and a memoir is a record of feeling. I write records of feeling.”
Those feelings are at the heart of Breasts, whether the writer is analysing the unwelcome attention her body received in her early teens or the breastfeeding struggles of more recent years. She wondered, when going through the latter experience, “Why does nobody talk about this?” but eventually came to the realisation that, “You don’t talk about it unless it’s happening to you”.
Since her brush with death, Edelstein is doing everything in her power to remain “present and energetic” for her children. The book might have been fuelled by anger, a direct response to the “pink and softness” around the breast cancer world, but it all comes from a fundamentally Jewish love of life. In Edelstein’s own words, “Life is suffering but we’re glad to be here.”
Breasts is published by Orion. £11.98 on Amazon
Chai Cancer Care is the Jewish community’s national cancer support organisation. If you or a family member has been affected by cancer please contact chaircancercare.org
