Tina Knowles, the mother of Beyoncé and Solange, has revealed her shock diagnosis of breast cancer in her new memoir, Matriarch.
Knowles, 71, hoped to end Matriarch with a beautiful story about celebrating the 4th of July 2024 with Beyoncé at her daughter’s house in the Hamptons. As Beyoncé watched her mother play with her granddaughter Rumi, Knowles felt it was a powerfully symbolic moment. “Joy, for Black women, is transformative,” she wrote.
But as she dictated the moment into her phone, she also realised she needed to book a doctor’s appointment. “I’d put off biopsies of two potentially cancerous masses in my breasts,” said Knowles.
Knowles realised it had been four years since her last mammogram. “I had made an appointment in 2022 but was told they were not doing mammograms at the time due to Covid,” she said. “Then life got so busy that I gradually fell into the magical thinking that I had done it.”
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She had booked in for tests that April, which showed her uterus lining had thickened — a potential cancer indicator. “They also said the mammogram was a little funky, suggesting biopsies of two potential masses, one in each breast.”
When a uterine biopsy came back as a fibroid, not cancer, Knowles said she “had a false sense of security about my health”.
Knowles decided not to tell Beyonce and Solange about her health problems until further investigation. “I’d had bad mammograms before, all of which turned out to be false alarms, so I didn’t tell my daughters.”
It took months for Knowles to secure an appointment to have the masses in her breasts checked out. “I convinced myself it couldn’t be that bad if no-one was rushing me to get biopsies.”
She flew back to New York on July 8 for the biopsies, and was “unsettled” that the doctors were particularly concerned about the mass in her left breast. Knowles still didn’t tell her family, and kept powering through with meetings for Beyoncé's hair brand Cécred, for which she is vice president.
When her doctor called urgently during a meeting “I knew”, she recalled.
Knowles was diagnosed with a small cancerous tumour in her left breast at stage 1A, along with a benign mass in her right breast that would also need to be removed.
Still, she hesitated to share the news with her daughters. “I didn’t want to be fully vulnerable with them. I am their mother, and there will always be some part of me that protects them.” Knowles waited until the next morning to tell Beyoncé “because I knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep”.
Beyoncé sprang into action. “[She] lined up one of the top breast surgery specialists in the country to give me a private consult,” said Knowles. She was grateful for her daughter’s intervention when she found the hospital doctor to be dismissive, and opted for the private surgeon and a breast reduction surgery to reduce further risk.
Knowles is clear that this was a teachable moment for women, especially black women, to seek a second opinion. “A lot of people, especially Black people, feel they have to go with the doctor they are given, even if we are not treated well,” she said. “You deserve second opinions, and it’s your opinion that sets the decision.”
Beyoncé, Solange and Kelly Rowland (Knowles considers the former Destiny’s Child member an honorary daughter) rallied round Knowles before her surgery in August, gathering in the Hamptons again beforehand. Knowles spent time watching Beyoncé's children Sir, Rumi and Blue Ivy ride horses.
The trio of women also surprised Knowles at her pre-surgery exams. “They surrounded me with love and prayer, and they sang to me,” she said. They also employed the healing power of memes about her planned breast reduction. Knowles had buoyed her spirits by the plans to reduce her cup size — there were so many looks I couldn’t wear because of my DDs” — to “perky boobs”.
“To lighten things, Solange got out her phone and pulled up a viral meme of a young trans woman saying ‘See how I do my makeup for work? Very demure, very mindful.’ ‘Mom, when you get through this surgery you’re going to be demure and mindful, cutesy,’” Knowles recalled.
Knowles came out of surgery “cancer-free”, but had to have a second surgery to remove a blood clot, called a hematoma, that formed after the reduction surgery. She also developed an infection, prompting Beyoncé to insist on being present for calls with specialists. “I was impressed with her care,” said Knowles.
“Beyoncé made me move into her house so she could supervise my recuperation, exactly as my mother or I would have done,” said Knowles. Beyoncé, Solange and Kelly Rowland reunited again to support Knowles receiving the Glamour Woman of the Year award while she was recovering.
Knowles says she is “still healing” and has been recuperating at her home in Malibu — which was tragically destroyed in the recent LA wildfires.
Matriarch: A Memoir by Tina Knowles. (Dialogue Books, £25)
