The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Book Review

The book starts off with Henrietta going to John Hopkins because she feels as if she has a knot in her stomach. To me Henrietta’s ability to sense how she has a knot or something odd within her strikes me as interesting and say to me that she is very intuitive. She seems to have an inherent fear of hospitals and doctors. As said in the book she is living during the Jim Crow era which enforced racial segregation. This chapter gave me a perspective on the fears a person of color might’ve faced in a time of a lot of racial divide. Since most other hospitals were segregated John Hopkins public wards were full of black people. It was saddening to see how David and Henrietta were forced to drive miles because it was the only major hospital that would treat people of color. I for one can’t imagine living in a situation in which I fear doctors who should be there to protect and heal, when hearing about how Henrietta’s ailments have not been properly treated and how her doctors should have realized before that she had a tumor I realized the truths of the times that black women even at a progressive hospital weren’t getting the proper medical care they needed. Her issues weren’t taken as seriously as they should have been this would soon lead to her death.