Make your world yellow

Imagine the worst that can happen to you; losing your job, getting divorced… how about losing a limb or battling cancer all though your childhood. Well that’s what happened to one boy; Albert Espinosa. This is his story and self proclaimed non self guide book to his life and his tips, advice and anecdotes about how to survive cancer and what it is like really dealing with these unimaginable atrocities that actually strike more than once.

At the age of 14, Albert was a ‘normal’ boy. He played with his friends and loved football until cancer stole his youth and Albert endure losing a leg, a lung and part of his liver. He learnt to walk four times and, underwent chemotherapy a gruelling 83 times.

Albert was finally cured by the age of 24, after missing out on some of the best years of his life, but perhaps a lot wiser, as he claims cancer enlightened his life. He wrote this book El Mundo Amarillo, The Yellow World.  It is how he sees the world and not a self help, but how to live your life; or more specific, how cancer taught him to live his life. Take one look at the cover and then the title, and you know already Albert’s simple life philosophy; yellow. To him, the world is yellow.

The yellow world is a world that's within everyone's reach, a world the colour of the sun. It is the name of a way of living, of seeing life, of nourishing yourself with the lessons that you learn from good moments as well as bad ones.

Albert writes extremely mater-of-factly, which is something I am not used to. Little is it surprising though when he is talking about something that he successfully managed to battle for ten years from such a young age. His writing is also slightly shocking at time, as he reveals his affectionate nicknames for fellow teen cancer patients as ‘eggheads’ (little explanation needed) for whom he promised to take on part of their lives once they died, thus finally leaving hospital with 3.7 lives equally shared out between him and other eggheads.  But how can he be judge when this was his life. It is only an outsider’s view of anyone who has not had a similarly torturous experience that may not understand the lovingness of this nickname.

The book is written light heartedly and throughout attempts to make cancer comical; to make it relatable to the common reader. I think this is quite important, and to many people, ‘cancer’ is a fierce word that terrifies. He describes what happened to him in these ten years with in an insightful and original manner. Black humour is in abundance in this book. He leaves us wondering  whether  to laugh or cry at such moments as having a goodbye party for the leg he is about to lose. But his strength of personality shines through and he is able to put a positive spin on this dreadful situation that he faces (as he appears to with everything) that he now literally has one foot in the grave.

However, Espinosa’s style does go on to tend to preach to the reader about the way life should be led, well in his eyes anyway. It is more than inspirational how he coped, but too many forced  ‘23’s’ come into play after the’ 23 Discoveries’ and the connection between him and the reader loosens as his suggestions become wilder such as to change one’s laugh every two years. He uses lots of lists, bullet points and questions in his writing which makes it less like a novel and perhaps at times, more like a guide, although I prefer thinking of it as more of a collection of anecdotes. The average reader will not have the same outlook on life as him and thus not be able to see the world as yellow and follow his rules.

Although it was an inspirational story, at times I found it uncomfortable to read and disagreed with the outlook portrayed. I found that even though Espinosa did not want to write a self help and so strongly claims this book is not, I think it is undeniably so. The initial story could stand alone and shows how Espinosa created himself and surfaced with his scars proudly on display.

Whilst at Penguin Press in the publicity department, I met Albert. I laid out 60 of his hardback books for him to sign knowing very little about the book. I saw Albert come through the office and noticed he had a false leg. I was given a copy of his book to read. At the time, my Aunite had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. It wasn’t until about two months later that I felt I was ready to read the book. I have tried to keep this book in mind, yet it is hard to take on board and practise the majority of what Espinosa preaches, except to be yellow.