The Immortality of Books and Cells

I’ll admit, it’s kind of hard coming up with books for the Maladjusted Book Club. Fun, but hard. While I always have ideas, and while I always have a stack of potential books in the living room, my bedroom, and pretty much every other room of my house, I strive to pick books for the book club that I want to delve into, that I want to live with for longer than a couple of weeks. I also try to pick books whose messages or themes coincide with An Attitude Adjustment blog, in some form or other. And I’ll be honest. This book club business is a lot of work. So after we finished I Don’t Know How She Does It, I thought I’d take a break for a while, maybe write a post about some great books that you might want to read on your own.

And then I saw it in the bookstore in paperback, and I knew, in an instant, that it was going to be our next selection.

Are you prepared for the next Maladjusted Book Club pick?

It took her three publishing houses and four editors, but in 2010, after nearly a decade of research and interviews, Rebecca Skloot finally published her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

I first heard about this book when Terry Gross interviewed Skloot on NPR’s Fresh Air. It was a rainy winter day, and I was on my way home from yet another megastore where I stocked up on baby items. It was the kind of interview, the kind of story, that had me still in the car long after I pulled into my driveway, fearful that in the minutes it took me to gather my things and walk through the door, I’d miss something fascinating, another detail in what was a long and complicated story about the personal, the political, and the medical.

I am not much of a science person (my brain is just wired differently), but this story is about way more than human cells. It’s about humanity. Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman whose cervical cancer was so widespread that there was nothing doctors could do to contain it. Yet the year was 1951, the city was Baltimore, and her doctor saw no problem in taking some of her cells and using them for research without her knowledge. Henrietta Lacks’ cells went on to be the basis of a number of experiments which led to advancements in cancer treatment and other kinds of illness, experiments which reaped tremendous profit without the family’s consent or knowledge after Lacks’ death. As all of the reviews will tell you, this story is not only about science and cells, but about history, race, class and legacy.

Fortunately for Skloot, and despite her trouble getting the book to press, all of her hard work paid off. It took her years to gain the trust of Lacks’ family, but once she did, she was able to record countless details of her life as well as learn about how the medical industry used the cells for experiments.

I cannot wait to read it with you, Maladjusted Bookclubbers.

Pretty much every review about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is glowing, but if you need more context to be convinced that you should read it and discuss it, here is a link to a review in the NY Times called “Eternal Life.”

So mark your calendars and join the discussion on Monday, May 2nd.

Are you in?

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Tagged as: Baltimore, Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot