By Raphael Sugarman

Being diagnosed with an aggressive and advanced form of breast cancer is enough to make anyone despair. What’s worse, though, is getting the news at 31-years-old, an age when most young women focus on nurturing a career, courting a boyfriend, or forming a family — not fighting a life-threatening disease.

“I think that most young women feel that if they are not 40 or older they don’t have to worry about it,” says Soraya, in an interview with the American Breast Cancer Guide, in the midst of an international tour.

Though still so young herself when diagnosed, Soraya recalls being struck by the fact that she was the oldest patient in her doctor’s office. “There was a 19-year-old, a 21-year-old, a 25-year-old and a 27-year-old, all with aggressive breast cancer,” says Soraya. “None of them was stage one or two. All of them were stage three or four.”

Breast cancer in Soraya’s family is all too common. Her grandmother, mother and aunt all died of the disease, at a relatively young age.

“Ever since I can remember, it (breast cancer) was part of my life,” she says, recalling the maternal grandmother from Colombia she never met. “She died when my mother was only 16. She had an extremely late-stage diagnosis.”

Soraya was only 18 when her mother was also identified with a metastasized, late-stage breast cancer, at age 41. At about the same time her aunt was diagnosed.

“Had they been detected even six months earlier, they probably would have had a better chance, a better quality of life,” says Soraya. “You just sit there and watch someone you care about suffering and you can’t do anything about it. You never really get over it. You just try and live with it.”

One of the great strengths of Soraya’s music has always been its bilingual and multi-cultural appeal. She feels as comfortable on a stage in San Francisco as she does in San Juan.

This diverse perspective, to no small extent, is a product of Soraya’s own family saga. Her father came to the United States from Colombia in about 1970. Several months later, he sent for his wife and young son and a year later, Soraya was born. After just a few months, the family moved back to Colombia for eight years, only to eventually resettle in New Jersey.

It was during the return to Colombia, that Soraya, the only American-born member of the family, began to play Latin American folk music on the guitar.

“My mom was very adamant about maintaining our roots and our heritage, she says. “I didn’t have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my lunch when I was growing up, I had dishes like arroz con pollo and empanadas.”
At Rutgers University, she studied English literature, French philosophy and women’s studies.

In 1996, Soraya released her first record, En Esta Noche/On Nights Like This (Polygram Latino/Island Records) to critical acclaim, including two songs that hit number one on Billboard’s Latin pop charts, and another that climbed to number six. Releasing both English and Spanish versions of the album, she gained notoriety in the United States, Europe and Latin America. “I can be unabashedly romantic and nostalgic when I write in Spanish, I can be as flowery as I want,” she says with an impish smile.

Two years later, in 1998, she released Wall of Smiles, which included a lead track she wrote with musical idol Carole King. She was invited to tour across the world with Sting, Alanis Morissette, Michael Bolton and Natalie Merchant.

In the year 2000, less than a week after releasing a new album — paradoxically called Body and Soul in Spanish (Cuerpo y Alma) — Soraya discovered a lump in her breast, while doing a self-examination in the shower. Despite her family history, it came as a huge shock to her.

“I couldn’t remember my address, I couldn’t remember where I was, I couldn’t remember a lot of things,” she says.

Soraya cancelled her tour and recording contract and began to attack the disease aggressively, vowing to “be stronger than the cancer.” She had a bilateral mastectomy, reconstruction, several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation therapy, before her body beat back the cancer.

During more than two years of torturous treatment, Soraya said that she spent a lot of time “searching.”

“I had to do a lot in order to get through it and not lose my own identity,” she says. “You really get tossed around by this experience. They have to deconstruct you and it is up to you to reconstruct yourself.”

For Soraya, this reconstruction included vows to involve herself more as a breast cancer activist, to slow down her life’s pace and to recommit herself to her music.

She became the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s Latin spokeswoman and committed herself to spreading the lessons of proper breast and health care to all women, particularly minorities and younger women. “I always tell young women that it is very important for you to do self breast exams, to be on top of your body and on top of any changes in your body,” she says. Soraya calls the number of breast cancer cases in this country “staggering.”

“You can look at it two ways,” she says. “Either we are getting better and earlier detection or something else is happening that is making all these cases of cancer show up. My take is that it is a combination of both things.”

On the personal front, fighting cancer has taught Soraya to relax a bit more and not to sweat the small stuff.

“My philosophy has changed,” she says. “Before, I could have told you everything that was going on in my life months ahead of time. Now, I know that there are certain things scattered on the calendar, but I don’t have it memorized. I don’t micromanage everything anymore.”

Her beloved music and a gift for turning guitar strings into heartstrings sustained her during her toughest times. “The songs just started writing themselves,” she says. “I didn’t know I was going to make another record. I didn’t know I was going to tour again. I just started writing.”

The result, the album Soraya, she calls “the best artistic work of my life.”

“It’s about hope, choosing hope. Because everybody has gone through something,” she says. “For me, it was breast cancer for someone else it could be a personal conflict or a couple’s conflict, or economic or social (problems).”

In the first verse of the song, “Shipwrecked,” the heroen drifts into a crashing storm, her soul “falling to the ocean floor.” But before long, dreams replace despair.

“I’m out of harm’s way and I never look back,” she sings. “I know I'm not dreaming; I’ve never felt so awake I know I'm not crazy, life has never made so much sense. I know there is more waiting for me. I know I've got so much more to give.”

Raphael Sugarman is a longtime New York City journalist. For eight years, he was a reporter and member of the editorial board at the New York Daily News. He has been a freelance writer for numerous publications including the New York Times, Chicago Sun Times, Toronto Globe and Mail and Arizona Republic.