A Picture of Health: Mary Cappello

Mary Cappello

Mary Cappello’s Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life, was originally published by Alyson Books in 2009, and reissued by Fordham University Press in 2021. Called “a cancer memoir for the 21st century,” Cappello says, in this interview upon the book’s initial publication, she doesn’t view breast cancer as just “an intensely personal” topic but as “a profoundly public disease” and “political.” As she states in the interview, her aim is to disrupt the traditional cancer narrative of diagnosis, treatment, and after.

Mary Cappello, Breast Cancer Book Talk with Author Mary Cappello, Part 1. Courtesy of the artist.

Mary Cappello, Breast Cancer Book Talk with Author Mary Cappello, Part 2. Courtesy of the artist.

Book cover for Mary Cappello’s Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life

About This Site

A Picture of Health: Jo Spence, a Politics of Disability and Illness is a multi-pronged project curated by Kenny Fries and Elisabeth Frost.

In 1986 the British artist, educator, and activist Jo Spence (1934-1992) described the question fundamental to her work: “how to represent a body in crisis.” Spence’s work reveals powerful political and artistic responses to the experience of inhabiting such a body and is as timely as ever. This website places her work in the context of the lived experience of chronic illness and of contemporary Disability Arts.

The Artists

Links to artists, with an image representing each artist that is explored in further detail on the artist's page.