In her intensely personal and insightful memoir, Mary Cappello wonders aloud for us what breast cancer awareness really makes us aware of, and responds as if for the first time to the deceivingly simple command: "tell me what you're feeling." Unable to eat on chemotherapy, Cappello feasts on the paintings of Marsden Hartley, yearns in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein, keeps company with Marcel Proust, and lets queer artists tease her back to life. Called Back looks through the lens of cancer to discover--often with humor--new truths about intimacy and essential solitude, eroticism, the fact of the body, and the impossibility of turning away.