Reviews with content warning for Racism - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

130 reviews

emblazedwords's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This book was so emotional and so well done. It was more than just a book on these immortal cells and how they were wrongly taken: it was also a history of the Lacks family themselves. Skloot gave us an intimate history on Henrietta as well as family, how her children were impacted by her death, and how they came to understand her legacy.

I didn't realize until reading this book how new the concept of medical consent is. I also got more background history on Black people and their relationship with medicine, how it's hurt them and made them distrustful.

Definitely worth the hype!

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angela_iseli's review against another edition

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emotional informative sad slow-paced

3.0

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danileah07's review against another edition

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informative slow-paced

3.0

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cj13's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative medium-paced

5.0

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swe3tpeach's review against another edition

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emotional informative medium-paced

If it's not already, this book should be required reading for all medical ethics classes in universities. Exposing new generations of doctors to the racial injustices within their field's history is essential to preventing the same mistakes from continuing in the future. The whole book was easy to read - perks of having a reporter for an author - reading like a novel sometimes when learning about the Lacks family history. Going in, I had no idea HeLa cells existed, let alone the impact they had on scientific discovery over the past century. The story was so compelling I became more interested as I continued to read. (That's when you know a nonfiction book did it right.) I probably won't go looking for more medical nonfiction books, but this one will stick with me for a long time. An amazing read!

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scrubsandbooks's review against another edition

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informative inspiring

4.5

"If our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?"

This story is part history text, science text, and biographical story, that keeps the reader engaged. It's heartbreaking to read what the family went through in their lifetime, but the developing friendship between Deborah and Rebecca was inspiring and heartfelt to read.

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oceanwriter's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

Thanks to random YouTube rabbit holes, I was somewhat familiar with Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells going into this book. Had I realized there was a book at the time, I would have read this a lot sooner.

The book discusses Henrietta Lacks’ life and death, the discovery of her extraordinary cells, the controversy surrounding the acquisition of those cells, and the author’s quest to make this woman known to the world. There’s also a great deal of focus on Henrietta’s children and the impact of her death and legacy on them.

There’s a great mix of science and emotional family history. I do wish that the book had separated these things more, maybe telling Henrietta’s life all in one section before moving on to the author’s pursuit of her story (or vice versa). As it is, the first section of the book is back and forth from past to present. Thankfully, it smoothes out as the book goes on and the focus shifts to the present and her living children.

Fascinating stuff here. It’s mind-blowing to me that anyone reading the book could access these cells at the click of a button. It breaks my heart that her family didn’t receive any of the revenue, especially when they had their own medical bills to pay. Even without the discovery of HeLa cells, their family story is one to be told.

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