Book #131 – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Over the summer of 2015, Knoxville’s STEM program assigned this book to the incoming freshmen. One mother objected on the grounds of “pornographic” content, due to the description of how Henrietta discovered her cervical cancer, and the mentions of her husband’s sleeping around. The author weighed in on the challenge in a September 2015 statement that made national news. The last publish on it was that the school was investigating the challenge, but did allow their teachers some level of autonomy when selecting reading lists.

The book itself was published in 2010 and is a mixture of the author’s research into how HeLa cells were found and developed, and the story of Henrietta and her family. In a statement by the author, she had not originally intended to include the story of the Lacks’ family, but after speaking with Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, the author knew she would have to include the family’s story. HeLa, a seemingly immortal strain of cancer cells, has been integral in cell research for decades, and this book details how it all started, and the consequences of that research.