Henrietta Lacks

Words: 723
Pages: 3

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks begins with a narration, by Rebbeca Skloot, the author, of Henrietta’s life at the time she had realized something was wrong with her body. As the story goes on, she is given her diagnosis and is treated by inserting radium into her cervix. At the same time, the doctor was extracting regular and cancerous cells from her cervix. After Skloot had given a little insider on Henrietta and her then current conditions, she began to walk the audience through her challenges of gathering the information on Henrietta. The first five chapters of the book was an insider on Henrietta’s life. These five chapters are key because beforehand, many didn’t know about the women behind the HeLa cells. From chapter 6 to the end of part I, Skloot alternates from her story to the story on Henrietta. Skloot’s dedication of gathering information on Henrietta Lacks is quite magnificent. The author struggled to gain access to Henrietta’s life story because of the trust issues the Lacks family had. In the end, she not only received information, she also gave information. Some members of the Lacks family had no idea that doctors around the world had Henrietta’s cells. Part I of this book reveals the dedication of Rebecca Skloot …show more content…
According to Skloot (2010), Henrietta lived in the Jim Crow era (Skloot, 2010, p.15). African Americans before the civil rights movements were treated extremely unfair. Segregation of blacks and whites was the social norm during Henrietta’s times. The world is a cruel place where inequality exists. African Americans had many disadvantages because of the stricter rules placed upon them. These disadvantages lead to higher poverty rates; poverty also affected a person education. In the book, Henrietta and her future husband Day had to leave school to help on their farm to help with family income. However, nothing from the book came to me as a total