Judith L. Pearson 
Radical Sisters [EPUB ebook] 
Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, Evelyn Lauder, and the Dawn of the Breast Cancer Movement

There was a time when women’s health was marginalized. There was a time when October wasn’t pink. There was a time when breast cancer wasn’t discussed. But three women stepped forward, refusing to be silenced.

Radical Sisters, written by award-winning biographer Judith L. Pearson, is the rich and meticulously researched narrativeof women who couldn’t have been more different: Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, and Evelyn Lauder.

The fact that all of them had breast cancer was not their most obvious common thread. Rather, it was that their cancers were diagnosed at a time when myths and outdated protocols directed what would happen to them next. Although they never met, they helped launch and lead the Breast Cancer Revolution.

Transporting readers through three decades of a changing social landscape in America (the 1970s through the 1990s), they took on the most prevalent issues: awareness, cause, treatment and cure of the disease. While none of them set out to be the trail-blazing advocates they became, they did for themselves what the mainstream healthcare system refused to do.

After her diagnosis Shirley reused the current surgical protocol of biopsy and potential radical mastectomy all in one step, becoming the first celebrity to publicize her cancer. Rose took the same surgical path, and then proceeded to change that protocol as a “loud and stubborn” voice in Congressional healthcare hearings. Evelyn created the pink ribbon, along with the first breast cancer nonprofit focused solely on research, using her company’s clout to publicize both.

The more than three-hundred thousand who are diagnosed every year stand on the shoulders of these courageous women. Breast cancer is no longer a story of struggling alone in the dark against a mysterious and deadly disease. Radical Sisters is a vital historical read for all women and the men who love them.

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