This literary non-fiction book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot writes about how Henrietta, an African American woman from a tobacco farmer’s family, her cells became the most important tool in medicine and how her cells had been helping the development of vaccines, studies of cancer, genes. Her cells have become the most commonly used cells in laboratories, however, she and her family has never received the credit they deserve, and her family still couldn’t afford health insurance. The author Rebecca Skloot writes about the stories between her and the Lacks family when doing research about Henrietta Lacks in Baltimore, from when she first tried to contact her family to how they became important friends of each other and learn about the history of Henrietta and her cells together.

The first central idea I have found in my book is the contribution of HeLa cells to medicine and science. Reading into the book, HeLa cells were brought up multiple times. It has made a huge contribution to the development of medicines, vaccines, and helped the studies of cancer, genes, cell studies, and more that we can’t imagine.

Further on into the book, I’ve been able to map out how was the HeLa cells discovered, how the discovery of Henrietta’s immortal cells (cause) had made countless benefits to science and society by providing more efficient and effective ways of performing experiments (effect) and helping to push forward in the studies of science.

 

Another central idea that was exposed throughout the book was racism was widespread towards African Americans in the 1950s. Segregation between black and white people was common, they didn’t have the same education, hospitals…… Because most black people weren’t educated, they had to continue working labor jobs, which paid less that couldn’t afford Henrietta and her siblings to go to school. This created a bad cycle that was hard to break and created classism that had mostly white people on the top of the social pyramid and most of the African Americans on the bottom. After rereading parts of my book in Lesson 2, I have identified how racism and classism have taken part in many African Americans’ lives.

The widespread of racism in the last century not only caused segregation between the black and white people, the stories of African American men being taken to perform experiments on diseases and take their organs had been carved in their memories and had created mistrust between the white and African Americans. In this map, I have mapped out how racism has been present in the lives of Henrietta and her family and how it created mistrust between them and white people and refuse to talk with any other authors who try to reach to them for research of Henrietta.

 

The book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” brings Henrietta back to life on the pages, and opens up the real history of the HeLa cells that have benefitted society and us in numerous ways that we might have not even thought of, including the development of the COVID-19 vaccines we are getting vaccinated today.  You are welcome to check out the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, and the movie with the same name “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” if you are interested.