The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
I shared in my stories the other week that I’m trying to read more non-fiction, and that The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot was where I was starting. (Now, cue the 7 fiction books that I’ve got lined up. I guess you can say that my intentions are good; execution is poor.)
I know, I’m over 10 years late to the party to this book, which caused a big splash upon its publication in 2010. You are probably at least modestly familiar with the story: Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951, was the unknowing donor of HeLa cells, the oldest and most commonly used cell line. HeLa cells were used by Jonas Salk to test the polio vaccine; they’ve been used in research for AIDS, cancer, and gene mapping. As Lacks’ daughter Deborah says to her long-deceased mother, “You’re famous. Just nobody knows it.” Skloot’s book is a deep dive into the Lacks family, the history of healthcare and medical abuse in the Black community, bioethics, spirituality, and basic biology.
This book seems oddly prescient now, given all the talk of vaccines and vaccine hesitance in some communities, questions about how the Covid vaccines were developed, and especially headlines about how racism is a public health crisis. Interestingly, the same day I picked up The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks at the library, the Lacks family was in the news for suing Thermo Fisher Scientific.
At its core, though, I think Skloot’s excellent book might actually be about trauma. Henrietta’s daughter Deborah is the author’s primary contact with the Lacks family, and their bond becomes thick. Skloot gives readers a visceral — but respectful — look at what losing a parent, especially when all sorts of resources are in short supply, can do to someone. If you’re still unsure about what people mean when they say “systemic racism” (or really, “systemic” in general), The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a good place to start understanding how decisions and dynamics can have a multitude of ripple effects — physically, mentally, and emotionally.
originally published on instagram