Reader Response to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

In an interview with Rebecca Skloot about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks I heard her say that she weaves together three narratives: that of the immortal cell, the narrative of Henrietta Lacks and the Lacks family, and the narrative of Skloot’s journey of discovery and in particular her relationship with Deborah Lacks.

But honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to easily pick that out, if I hadn’t heard her say it, which, I think is a credit to Skloot’s skill as an author. Or to put it another way, I suppose if I had only read the first two thirds of the book I could see it: Henrietta’s narrative, the scientific narrative and a reporter struggling to gain access the Lacks family. Three narratives. But I think the success of this structure really comes to fruition, in that, by the time the reader reaches the last third of the book, the section titled Immortality, that all three narratives are so tightly woven that the reader loses sight that there is a structure. It becomes one story. And I think any good story should do this; a reader should get lost in the story.  

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a giant of a story and the issues raised are not simple or easy to pin by any means. They’re far-reaching. There’s the questions of biomedical ethics in regards to informed consent, the monetary rights as well as actual rights of possession of tissue samples that go along with it. Skloot raises questions about the historical treatment of African Americans by the medical community; and how, while that treatment is no longer reprehensible, its legacy is still alive in the memories of the communities it affected. There’s the questions of class and poverty and the current affairs of health care. (If HeLa came from a middle class white woman this story would hold little of its intrigue.) When the story is over, these heavy questions remain, leaving a residue that far outweighed my ability to recollect the three narratives Skloot referenced.

I think the primary reason that three narratives were able to become one in my reading experience  is that the journey of Skloot and Deborah becomes centerpiece. Throughout the Immortality section Skloot uses Deborah’s reactions to the unfolding of  HeLa in the public perspective as a way to push forward the central conflict of the book. Deborah literally falls apart when she reads the details of her mother’s autopsy in a medical journal. When scientists come to take blood samples from her to gather information to clear up the wreckage of the “HeLa Bomb,” she waits and waits for results from what she thought was a cancer test. (Deborah remains uncertain as to whether she has cancer or not for the rest of the book.) When Deborah learns how to use the internet, she obsessively and compulsively googles HeLa in search for an understanding about her mother.

On one hand Deborah simply misunderstands the science, like when she thinks her mother is cloned. But on the other hand, she is empathically and spiritually bound to her mother. Deborah has this very real yearning to connect to her mother and this idea that Henrietta is not at peace –  she has a continually seeking and worrying personality that creates a sympathy readers can latch on to. (She’s also firmly placed within a rich family background that Skloot establishes early on.)

As Deborah’s own health concerns begin to rise to the forefront of the story, it’s almost as if her character takes over and encompasses all of the book’s issues at once. In the chapter Hela, Goddess of Death Deborah says, “Truth be told, I can’t get mad at science ... I’m walking drug store! I would like some health insurance so I don’t got to pay all that money every month for drugs my mother cells probably helped make.”

The best example of the transcendent merging of the three narratives is the remarkable scene toward the end of the book where Skloot, Deborah and Zakariyya visit Christoph Lengauer’s lab to finally see Henrietta’s cells. It’s an event that Deborah calls a miracle. It’s like a wave of relief for Deborah when Lengauer admits that the medical community doesn’t treat humans as humans and that the Lacks family ought to be recognized. In terms of structure, the scene is a collision of all three narratives.  In the scene there’s the ongoing continuing work that’s carried on by the HeLa cells, there’s the acknowledgment of Henrietta as a real person with a real history and there’s a sort of climactic or triumphant understanding for Deborah.

Other notes on reading:

- I’ve always kind of harped on the concept that a good story connects the past to the future and I couldn’t think of a better example than this one.  The story connects the cells of a woman who died over 60 years ago to the conceptual future of health care issues. But it’s also super fascinating to think about the very literal future this book implicates of the ever multiplying cells, growing and growing and growing. (I, mean, this is really obviously obvious, but it’s a trip to think about.)

- This was a really cool RadioLab segment featuring a sound bites of interviews in the book and really remarkable sound bite from the scene where Deborah’s cousin Gary does his “exorcism”/prayer/thing and casts the “burden” of Deborah’s cells to Rebecca.