In 1989, the Hong Kong cult classic writer Xi Xi was diagnosed with breast cancer and began writing in order to make sense of her diagnosis and treatment. This book, published two and a half years later, is a disarmingly honest and deeply personal account of the author's experience of a mastectomy and of her subsequent recovery. The book opens with her gently rolling up a swimsuit. A beginning swimmer, she loves going to the pool. As this routine pleasure is revoked, the small loss stands in for the greater one. But Xi Xi's mourning begins to take shape as a form of activism. She describes her previous blinkered life of the mind before she came into her body and learned its language. She coaxes and confesses, confronts society's failings, and advocates for a universal literacy of the body. This book was heralded as the first Chinese language book to cast off the stigma of writing about illness and to expose the myths associated with breast cancer.