The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

It was a rainy day in Maryland, Baltimore when a colored woman quickly jumped out of her husband car and then swiftly rushed past the colored restroom, “the only one she was allowed to use”(Skloot 13) and into the entrance of the John Hopkins hospital. Upon her arrival, the women went straight to the receptionist desk and unhesitantly reported “I got a knot on my womb”(Skloot 13). After she was taken for a medical examination, the woman was then told to go home without any idea or clue that there was something deadly that was both growing and dividing on her cervix. The woman was known as Henrietta Lacks, and this book nicely depicted how a poor, uneducated African American woman was taken advantage without her consent and then became one of the greatest figures in the medical field. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a non-fiction research and biographical novel written by Rebecca Skloot, which depicted the life and the

Although her early life was not the most pleasant, however, after she ended up living with her grandfather, Henrietta was able to meet her cousin David (Day), who then later became her husband and the father of her children. As Henrietta and Day grew older, they eventually had their first child, but continue to work as farmers in the tobacco field their slave ancestors had previously worked in. Nonetheless, when the Great Migration from the South to Turner station started to occur, Henrietta and her children were some of the many black families that were leaving Clover for “the Promised Land” known as Turner Station (Skloot 26). After several years have passed, Henrietta have been constantly expressing to her closest girlfriends a body part discomfort to which she often referred to as being a “knot”. Although