Redefining Beauty

The fourth chapter turns to works by Pauline Melville and Elizabeth Nunez to explore how breast cancer and anorexia nervosa offer physical and emotional renewal for the protagonists. In The Migration of Ghosts, Boundaries, and Anna-In-Between, Melville and Nunez use their characters to question body-image ideals. The works attest to the life-altering impact of disease. The protagonists’ illnesses, rooted in their dis-ease with their bodies, their relationships, and their privilege, highlight the emotional side effects that can accompany physical maladies. In Melville and Nunez’s works, illness functions as the force of inertia that propels temporary migration and the protagonists’ intensely introspective experiences. Together, the texts afford a closer look at the relationship between disease, migration, and familial reconnection.