‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ by Rebecca Skloot is a literary non-fiction novel about the woman behind the famous HeLa cells and how medical research has grown exponentially since their discovery. The story includes Henrietta’s life growing up, what HeLa has done for society, how Henrietta’s children grew up, and how the author came to find Henrietta and all of her information.
Here are examples of some of the notes I took from this book! They display central ideas, themes and social issues in ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’.
At the beginning of the story, I thought that one of the themes was that racism and discrimination often make it difficult for Black families to provide since in Henrietta’s hometown, race was a very big part of their lives. When the author, Rebecca Skloot, visited Henrietta’s cousin, Cootie, in Clover (Henrietta’s hometown) for the first time, he said, “[Rebecca] don’t act strange around me ’cause I’m Black. You’re not from around here” (Skloot 124). This shows how often race was associated with their daily lives and how it had unknowingly become very important in Clover. After reading on, I found that race didn’t play too big a role when it came to the cells, as it didn’t matter whether or not HeLa cells were from a black woman, only that they helped many lives and medical research. What was associated with race was the mistrust the black community had in doctors, because of many cases of doctors experimenting on black people, and “snatching” them off the street. I’d also say that in Henrietta’s childhood, white farmers had better opportunities than black people, which affected the perspective she had of white people, which also relates back to race in Clover.
However, one of the big topics that I did find come up in my book was: Henrietta’s importance to her family. In this process page, I used page 249 to show how important Henrietta was to her youngest son, Zakariyya, even though she died when he was two years old. It showed Zakariyya’s love for Henrietta, despite not knowing her well at all, and how Henrietta had affected Zakariyya as a person. As I dug deeper into the book, I came to realize that Henrietta’s value lies further than her family, but her entire community (and medical research).
Not only was Henrietta important to medical research and the medical field, but also to her family, hometown, friends, and even people who never got to meet her, such as her oldest son’s wife. This process page, it touches on how Henrietta helped lead to many different medical discoveries which helped many people and those led to many other discoveries. Henrietta was highly valued in her community as she helped many people as she was very motherly and kind, she helped everyone and anyone who needed help, including uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins, friends, and her cousin’s friends.
Whilst researching more about this central idea, and finishing the book, I found that one of the biggest parts of this story is a knock-on cause-and-effect sequence that plays out across the story, the cause being Henrietta’s cells being taken, and one of the final effects being the COVID-19 vaccine, which is available for people to get in many countries worldwide today (get vaccinated). I believe that through this cause-and-effect sequence, the author tries to convey the message that whilst being used for research is good for research growth, people should still get the credit that they deserve. This can be seen in the sequence because most people don’t know the person behind HeLa, and HeLa allows the result of many vaccines and treatments today. The Lackses were not given credit for what Henrietta’s cells have contributed to society, and only now has the case officially gone to court, almost 70 years later.
If you are interested in learning more about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells, read the book ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’, or the 2017 movie with the same title. I also recommend this article from the John Hopkins Hospital, which originally took Henrietta’s cells. Overall, I would highly recommend this book as it is a very fascinating read and brings up many topics that most people would not know about!