Hunter’s Point

A community south of San Francisco with a large African American population and unusually high levels of breast cancer, cancer, asthma and glaucoma— is home to an abandoned navy shipyard, two power plants, a sewage waste facility and many toxic waste sites. The impact of these industrial sites on the health of the community is subject to much debate.

Photographer Anne Hamersky and I were hired by the Imani Breast Cancer Support Group and the Bayview Hunter’s Point Women Working Together for A Healthier Community to shoot and interview 24 women from the Hunter’s Point community who had either had breast cancer or who were still living with it. Our mission was to talk to the women about their breast cancer journey and how it had affected their lives. “Growing up many of us were told that you keep your panties up and your dress down,” support group founder Kathryn Summers told us. “That was imbedded in us. You don’t touch yourself and you don’t let anyone else touch you.” That included breast self-exams, which are pivotal in the discovery of breast tumors. “Many women are in denial and they’re afraid,” says Kathryn. “They believe if they don’t check themselves they won’t find anything, and if they don’t find anything they won’t have anything to worry about.” A major goal of the support groups has been to educate the women of Hunter’s Point on breast cancer prevention and to try to change what it sees as a kind of cultural conditioning in the African American community.

It was an amazing project. At first I was afraid to talk to women about breast cancer; I didn’t want to bring the language alive in my world. But far more devastating than hearing about being sick was hearing about sickness in conjunction with poverty. There’s nothing nice about that at all.