JUN - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

June review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2014: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, 2010. [Award Winning category]

This month's book is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, a groundbreaking journalistic/biographical endeavor that has won countless awards to date. Published in 2010, this book has attracted the public eye for its hard-knock story, as its dealing with non-fiction in a way that is decidedly engaging and enthralling, and of course its picturesque cover image, one of the only surviving images of the book's subject, Miss Henrietta Lacks, the quasi-faceless woman who became known as HeLa. I am a sucker for judging a book by its cover (and a beer, and a notebook, et cetera et cetera), and this cover has stayed with me since its arrival on the scene. I have never been much for non-fiction, although my dalliance with being a historical fiction writer caused me to give it another chance, and I have also never quite been one to keep up on "the It book" of the year, as much as I want to read them. When I saw this book on the buy two get one free table at Barnes & Noble, I figured I should probably go for it. I knew two categories for this year were Award-Winning and Medical Thriller, and I figured I could decide which one to file Immortal Life under later. Being the procrastinator I am, I pretty much left it until the writing of this post to decide which category to read it for, and I came to the conclusion that while it is a medical text, it is not much of a thriller, per se, and Award Winning seems to be the better fit. Although I do not really know how to write about an Award Winning book in terms of its awards (as a category/genre/manner of reading it), but I will do my best.

First and foremost, I should mention the various things I liked about the writing, the composition of the book. Rebecca Skloot's journalistic voice still allows itself to be poetic at times, and her flow is easy and lends itself to storytelling rather than stark reportage. On the note of storytelling, I know I've talked before about finding the hidden or buried stories, and I think this book is a perfect example. It is not just the data, not just the facts. Skloot masterfully builds them up from behind in her dedication to finding out who Henrietta Lacks actually was. I love that. I loved reading about Henrietta's obsession with toenail polish and how her best friend cried out when she saw Henrietta's dead body because the nails were so chipped and it made her finally realize the extent of pain that Henrietta was experiencing. The purely human glimpses like that, the arresting tidbit--like the story Skloot gave us to illustrate that first spark of interest she had in the mysterious yet ubiquitous Henrietta Lacks.

I like to think that I, too, would've been entranced by that sliver of Henrietta. Even though Skloot did not put herself too much at the forefront of the book, I felt myself identifying with her, if only as the recipient of this story. I found myself simply soaking up the story, facts and figures about Henrietta's life and cells, the controversy that these small things engendered. It is interesting to note that Henrietta herself is also not physically in the book for very long, only for the first section, Part I: Life, which ends with her death on page 86. Just like she was not physically a part of her fame. That in itself is an interesting separation of sections: Life, Death, Immortality. The first chapter of Part One: Life begins with the exam that Henrietta demanded from the doctors, the exam that would set her down the path to being one of the most famous cell lines in all of science. It starts with the beginning of the end rather than the beginning of Henrietta, choosing to loop back instead of starting cold from the moment she came into this world. It seems to echo the ostensible "One Thing" that made up Henrietta Lacks, her body, her cells, and then move back into the woman, the way that Skloot herself made her way through Henrietta's past. The first chapter of Part Two: Death is the first intersection of Henrietta's family with science and Johns Hopkins, when George Gey learned of her death and asked David if an autopsy would happen. Part Two re-cements the focus on Henrietta's body, tracking the diminishment of her person until no one really even knew who the woman behind HeLa was. And finally, Part Three: Immortality begins with the next intersection of Henrietta's family with Science: when Bobbette is talking to a man who works with HeLa cells, ostensibly marking the first time anyone in the Lacks family knew anything about Henrietta's cells being taken and used. This section comes more to the forefront of the mind, in that it is in the more recent past and Rebecca Skloot herself comes more into play. She begins to describe her courtship of the Lacks family, her dogged desire to uncover the truth, leaving countless phone messages and writing letters and even just driving to Lacks Town to see what she could see. This section, to me, seemed about the different kinds of immortality Henrietta Lacks is experiencing, the interplay between these kinds, and also a meditation on the consequences of such immortality. There is the immortality in the simple fact that her cancer cells did not die. There is the immortality that said cheating of death brought to the cells, the aura of something exciting and groundbreaking that ripped through the medical world with the pervasive distribution of her cells. And then there is the more intimate immortality, the one born of motherhood and friendship, the one that everyone who knew Henrietta will carry on, that they pour into the conferences and museums and ideas for books in order for her name to live on. This almost unconscious examining of immortality is really what tied this book together for me.

I wanted to touch on the idea of religious faith versus scientific understanding, and how, in this text, they don't seem to rage against each other as much as usual. I noted this most in the "faith healing" scene, where Deborah is "healed" by her cousin Gary and he seems almost possessed by the spirit of God (p289). Again, Skloot does not present this interaction with any sort of judgment or skepticism, instead opting for an almost awe-inspired tone of sheer observation. It is clear that the Lacks family fall on the side of religious faith and seem diametrically opposed to the scientific understanding of Johns Hopkins and the rest of the scientific community, and while Deborah's brothers rage and want to sue everyone who has ever used their mother's cells for science, Deborah tries to isolate herself from it. She has stress attacks and stops talking to people about it. But with the influence of Skloot's presence and their combined quest to find out everything they can about her mother and her cells, Deborah actually starts to embrace science, seeing Henrietta as a sort of bridge between the two. At one point, Deborah mentions that the cells did something or other because it was Henrietta up in heaven being mad at the people down there poking and prodding without permission, so there is a conflation here with the inexplicable and the not understood that takes form in a celestial Henrietta. I liked it, I thought it gave meaning to some things that I can imagine would be difficult to grasp with only a middle school education. It seemed almost as if it was Deborah's way of keeping her mother alive and in her world, after losing her so quickly and violently.

Before I close, I think I should muse on importance of this book, the fact that it won the 19 or so awards listed in one of the first pages of the book, the afterword talking about "How you should feel about all this isn't obvious." (p316) In the reader discussion guide at the end, there was a question that particularly struck me:

As a journalist, Skloot is careful to present the encounter between the Lacks family and the world of medicine without taking sides. Since readers bring their own experiences and opinions to the text, some may feel she took the scientists' side, while others may feel she took the family's side. What are your feelings about this? Does your opinion fall on one side or the other, or somewhere in the middle, and why?

I was unsure of what my answer to this question was for a long time, and I think it's possible that that is why it took me so long to finish up this review. But I came to a conclusion after a discussion I had with my boyfriend a few days ago about learning. I figure, the very first step is to be unsure, to ask yourself these questions. One of the most rampant and unnerving things about our social culture is our knee-jerk need to share something or post something we "read" (see: agree with the title and skimmed the article), asserting our knowledge or competence or what have you. I say we because I know I fall prey to this, and I am trying my best to work on it. To let myself slow down and really read through things, get my critical eye back, allow for some questioning. It's ok to have opinions that others disagree with, but there is nothing worse than a strident voice with nothing to prop it up but bluster. If there is one overarching insight I think I gained from reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks it isn't necessarily a solidified opinion on tissue property rights or scientific freedom. It is that my year out of school, while fruitful, has softened me into a passive learner, and I don't want to be that anymore. There are always attractive ways to gain more information--you don't have to read the Wall Street Journal every day. Search them out. Make use of them.