There are lots of great reasons why independent bookstores should be supported, and the other day I read an article that reminded me of what is perhaps MY favorite part of exploring independent bookstores (and also it’s one of my favorite parts of working at one): our displays! Believe it or not, the piles of books you trip over when you walk in are actually lovingly, carefully crafted selections of what we think you should read. There’s such a great chance of stumbling upon something lovely that you never figured you’d read just by walking around and looking.
Since March is National Women’s History Month, we’ve put together an appropriate display that ranges from Grace Kelly to Joan of Arc, and which also happens to include a recently released book I’ve just begun: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It’s one of the most bizarre stories I’ve ever heard and since I’ve not read the entire book yet, I’ll just try to condense the premise here. The story itself is enough to spark anyone’s interest.
Henrietta Lacks was born in Virginia in 1920, the daughter of a tobacco farmer. She went on to marry her first cousin and move up to Maryland, where she gave birth to five children. She and her family were poor, and when Henrietta died at age 31 due to complications brought on by cervical cancer, she was buried without a tombstone in a family cemetery back in Virginia. To this day nobody knows exactly where her body is buried.
What most people – her family included – didn’t know about Henrietta when she died was that when she was being treated at Johns Hopkins for her cervical cancer, her cells were taken without her permission. In fact, she didn’t even know they were taken. Researchers took a look at them and found out they could be kept alive and grown – something scientists had been desperate to succeed in doing. The cells of this African-American woman who died poor and young and in pain were named ‘HeLa’, and it’s thanks to HeLa that a polio vaccine was developed.
HeLa has since been mass produced and used to help doctors research AIDS and cancer, study gene mapping, and realize the effects of the atom bomb, among other things. They’ve been mailed to curious scientists all over the world and here’s a neat fact: 50 million metric tons of her cells have now been grown.
Another kicker is that Henrietta’s family only found out about her still-living cells about 20 years after her death. They didn’t get any profits from her ‘immortality’, and in what feels like an unbelievably cruel twist, they couldn’t afford health insurance.
It’s an alarming story that raises confounding questions about race, class, science, and bioethics. Author Rebecca Skloot writes with authority and sensitivity, and so far I can’t put the book down. As I said, it’s on our women’s history month display, but it also goes beyond that – it’s a science book, a history book, and a civil rights book too. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so fascinating.
Susie
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