THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS
By Rebecca Skloot
Crown, 2010
Category: Nonfiction for adults
Every once in a while I read a book that reminds me that sharing true stories about real people is only the second most satisfying way I spend my literary time. The first? Reading true stories about real people written by my colleagues. This month I listened to the audio version of Rebecca Skloot’s THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, and I can tell you for sure that this book is a model of what creative nonfiction can be. It’s brilliant.
HeLa was the first human cell line successfully grown long-term in a petri dish, and I remember reading years ago in a graduate school textbook that the cells came from a woman whose initials are disguised in the word HeLa itself: Helen Lane. The textbook was wrong. The real woman’s name was Henrietta Lacks, and her true story—and the true story of her family—is heartbreaking and inspiring and I am so glad that Rebecca Skloot has finally shared it with the world. And that I got to read it.