My bedtime reading this week is a non-fiction book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. My first thought goes to the author, Rebecca Skloot. Well done! The research and the writing go beyond the inspired work of a curious person; they become the work of a curious person who knows that the answers to her questions must be shared. The author's interest in Henrietta Lacks was seeded in a college biology class when the teacher talks about HeLa...This is why educators are the most noble among all professions. Teachers plant seeds they might never with their own eyes see develop into great ideas and good people. The author introduces her readers to genetics, cellular biology, class and racial discrimination in the medical field, Henrietta Lacks' family and ancestry, the history of medical research and the development of vaccines. More important -- I am only halfway through the book as of this Sunday morning -- the author develops a theme that I want to spend more time thinking about. Courage and Persistence.
Not only is Skloot a courageous and persistent researcher, she shows in her book the courage and persistence among others to whom we seldom give credit. Clinical researchers, the family members and good neighbors who tend the their weary and ill and dying, family and friends who support their writers and artists. Although all the research that resulted since 1954 in millions of saved lives began with one scientist, the lessons begin with one woman -- Henrietta Lacks. Evil is often the product of courage and persistence. Sociopaths and criminals who successfully achieve their nefarious goals are also persistent and willingly to put themselves at risk. However, we do not praise them. We praise the women like Henrietta Lacks who opened her heart and home to others until she lost the strength to stand at a stove and open her front door. One of the reasons that she lives in immortality is that she as a Black woman in 1953 America courageously trusted others -- white men and women in the hospitals -- when she had no proof in her young life that white people could be trusted to do what is right.
A reader might say She had no choice because of her cancer and her babies. Trusting the doctors was not a choice; it was a necessity. She was totally dependent on their care and knowledge. However that may be true, it is also true that most Black people in 1950s American knew that white people would exploit, manipulate, and use them, without permission or accountability. Henrietta did not know about the Tuskagee syphillis trials but, she would have known that pregnant Black women and their fetuses died while in the care of white doctors and nurses. She would have known about the discrimination and abuse that Black women suffered everyday on the streets of white American towns. She lived it.
I cannot imagine the life of a Black woman in 1950s America except through their stories and through the small lens of my own memories. I am a white woman. I grew up in Amarillo, Texas, and in Clovis, New Mexico. I've often told in my books and my blogs and social media posts these memories. But my memories are not as wide or deep or real as those of even one Black woman.
Henrietta Lacks knew something was wrong with her body. She knew and with limited knowledge tried to explain her problems to doctors and nurses who dismissed her. As is often the case in 2025 -- women, especially those without privilege or deep pockets, are dismissed and ignored. She knew her own body. She persisted until the symptoms after a very difficult birth presented the advanced problems to doctors. As with so many stories like hers, the medical professionals lacked empathy and did not diagnose her cancer until her body was beyond healing or repair. Yet, she persisted in her trust and allowed torturous months of radiation and surgeries. Why? She chose to seek healing among those who had the best skills -- because she wanted to be with her children. Knowing the white doctors did not respect her as a human being or as a Black woman did not deter her. Knowing that they cared far more about the science than the human being did not deter her. She persisted. That took more courage than I can imagine.
We need women with her kind of courage and persistence. Women like me are shocked that half the voters who helped white male supremacists win the 2024 elections were women. We see them everyday -- aging white women who sit at High Tea and applaud the mass deportations of the undeserving masses, white women who guard their 16-room farm houses as if no one knows that our tax dollars via farm subsidies paid them to build, women who scramble to pay personal debts and buy groceries while tithing and paying preachers to tell them that the poor are unworthy, women who hate all other women and believe in white male supremacy. We see you. We need more of the opposite. Women who courageously and persistently espouse Empathy and Unity and Diversity.
We need women like Henrietta Lacks whose love for her family and neighbors outweighed the distrust that white doctors had earned among Black Americans. Whose love for her family and neighbors outweighed her pain. Whose love for her family and neighbors was far greater than the knowledge that white men would exploit and abuse her. We needed this story. We need to give Henrietta's trust and love the immortal life that her cancer cells gave to science.