The Colors I Saw: A Cancer Memoir

Baker knitter animal lover wife mother - but most of all a writer. Thats how Eliza Walton sees herself. Until halfway through her MFA studies a diagnosis of rectal cancer lands on her head. Fear shame and dread threaten to pull her under.How to face an anxiety-laden year of radiation chemo and a permanent colostomy?Family friends caregivers even her animals all help. But Elizas pen becomes her best weapon. Chronicling each assault on her body with startling honesty Eliza uses the act of writing to make sense of her powerlessness in the face of this unspeakable illness. When her vitriolic alter-ego appears she and Eliza navigate the terror absurdity and even the humor of an uncertain future together.Neither superficial nor overly sentimental The Colors I Saw is a riveting metafictional memoir filled with references to the literature that fueled Elizas imagination and sustained her. Its the story of her deep shame and loss accepting an unacceptable reality and the friends and family who helped her survive. In the messy journey from You have rectal cancer to living a full if somewhat altered life this endearing page-turner is not about whether the author survives but how.