The Cancer Within

"Beautifully written and theoretically inspired, this vivid and pathbreaking ethnography shows how history continues to haunt Romanian women’s sexual and reproductive lives, and how post-socialist healthcare provides no panacea for a cervical cancer crisis and accompanying HPV vaccine hesitancy. The Cancer Within is a must-read for those interested in gender, sexuality, and reproductive health, as well as medicine in the post-socialist era."

~Marcia Inhorn, author of America’s Arab Refugees: Vulnerability and Health on the Margins

"The Cancer Within is a compelling analysis of Romanian women’s resistance to cervical cancer screening and the HPV vaccine by a cultural 'insider.' In this wide-ranging and readable account, Pop reveals how Romanians’ reproductive lives and choices are profoundly shaped by the country’s violent history of reproductive governance under Ceauşescu, as well as by inequities of health care delivery in the post-communist era."

~Elise Andaya, author of Conceiving Cuba: Reproduction, Women, and the State in the Post-Soviet Era