{"id":385,"date":"2012-03-19T10:20:16","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T18:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=385"},"modified":"2012-03-19T10:20:16","modified_gmt":"2012-03-19T18:20:16","slug":"the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/19\/the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks– review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks<\/a> by Rebecca Skloot<\/a><\/p>\n

My rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a>
\nA friend of mine in Chicago is starting a book club, and this is going to be their first book. So I thought I\u2019d take a look. I\u2019m not much one for non-fiction, or this kind of subject, but Rebecca Skloot is a fine writer, and I found the book to be very readable. A fine, good read. Engaging, compelling, interesting, and probably most importantly, eye-opening. There\u2019s the praise.<\/p>\n

Ostensibly an attempt to tell Henrietta\u2019s story, this book ends up being more about the story of trying to tell Henrietta\u2019s story. Maybe that\u2019s the author\u2019s intent. Maybe there\u2019s some deep symbolism there. In as much as the cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks continued to live and multiply, so too does the ongoing effect of those cells on her family. Maybe. That\u2019s seems a bit easy. I think what we really have here is just too little information available about Henrietta herself, and so she gets covered in a few short chapters.<\/p>\n

There, of course descriptions of how her cells have set a course for cancer research, and genetic research in general. But the vast majority of the book seems to be around how Skloot has to deal with one of Henrietta\u2019s daughters, Deborah, in order to get as much information as she can to write the book at all. Which is not a bad thing, per se, and it is a good story. But the book ends up being about itself, a book about what it took to write the book.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I got out of it, anyway. And just like you always suspect, in the back of your mind, that good guys are going to win, to survive, when you\u2019re watching them put in danger in a movie, so too did I have that sense as I was reading this. \u201cI\u2019m holding the book, so Skloot must have succeeded in getting it written.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skloot manages to tell the story without making it just about racism and sexism and class. Those elements are present in the story, but Skloot doesn\u2019t let them take over, doesn\u2019t make this book just a screed. And she does give a good introduction, as much as needed, to the science of cell division, cancer, the commercial side of things, patients\u2019 rights, rights to privacy, again without lecturing too much, to provide context for what Deborah is dealing with as she fights to understand and honor her mother\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

If, in the end, Skloot\u2019s goal was to elevate Henrietta Lacks to the stature of important historical figure, and to make her a real person and not just a footnote through an examination of her families survival after her passing, then I\u2019d say she succeeded, and the book is worth reading.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot My rating: 3 of 5 stars A friend of mine in Chicago is starting a book club, and this is going to be their first book. So I thought I\u2019d take a look. I\u2019m not much one for non-fiction, or this kind of subject, but Rebecca … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks– review on Goodreads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-6d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385\/revisions\/386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}