The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

trouble with the law since he got out of jail, with various charges for assault and drunk and disorderly conduct. “I think them ...

“Yeah, like you to have that, put it on your wall,” Deborah said. Zakariyya’s eyes filled with tears. For a moment the dark circ ...

“Everybody always yellin, ‘Racism! Racism! That white man stole that black woman’s cells! That white man killed that black woman ...

come with me when I did some of my research if she wanted, and she said, “I want to go to centers and colleges and all that. Lea ...

Her room was about six feet wide, with a twin bed against one wall and a small desk dir- ectly across from it, nearly touching t ...

When Deborah found pages describing Hela the Marvel character, she thought they were describing her mother, since each of Hela’s ...

That’s what happened the first time I called, she said. “I was all excited, sayin I want a book written about my mother. Then th ...

better, even if we are fifty years late.” When I explained this to Deborah, she was ecstatic. It would be just like Pattillo’s c ...

B y the time Deborah was ready to see her mother’s cells for the first time, Day couldn’t come. He’d said many times that he wan ...

but he couldn’t afford new ones. He looked at me and said, “That sister of mine, she crazy for not wantin money from them cells. ...

“Oh God,” she gasped. “I can’t believe all that’s my mother.” Zakariyya just stared in si- lence. Christoph reached into the fre ...

and kills any cells that are floating around.” He explained what culture medium was, and how he moved cells from freezer to incu ...

“Within the DNA in that picture is all the genetic information that made Henrietta Henri- etta,” Christoph told them. “Was your ...

After a long silence, Zakariyya spoke. “If those our mother’s cells,” he said, “how come they ain’t black even though she was bl ...

“Oh,” she said, stunned. “That’s okay. You know, when people hear about who HeLa was, first thing they say is, ‘Y’all should be ...

toph’s lab, Deborah and I set out on a weeklong trip that would start at Crownsville, where we hoped to find her sister’s medica ...

No one had to tell us something awful had happened at Crownsville—we could feel it in the walls. “Let’s go find someone who can ...

knowing.” “I’m ready,” Deborah said, nodding. “We had a serious asbestos problem,” he said. “Most of our records from the fiftie ...

Lurz opened to Elsie’s page, then quickly closed his eyes and pressed the book to his chest before we could see anything. “I’ve ...

The man paused, looking at Deborah, then at me: a short black woman in her fifties, and a taller white woman in her twenties. De ...