The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot (2010)
“A Black woman's cells were taken without her knowledge and became the most important biological material in medical history — and her family never received a dime.”
Similar Books
Thematic connections across eras and genres — books that talk to each other.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Both concern the systematic denial of bodily autonomy to Black Americans — Douglass about slavery's claim on the body, Skloot about medicine's claim on biological material
The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara Kingsolver
Multiple interweaving narrative voices examining how powerful institutions exploit those without power — different era and continent, same structure of privilege and damage
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
A Black woman's life rendered with full humanity against a backdrop of systematic racial violence and institutional indifference
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
Narrative nonfiction reconstructing a life through reported sources — Krakauer and Skloot both assemble their subjects from the accounts of those who knew them
Native Son
Richard Wright
The structural conditions that make Black lives invisible to institutions and exploitable by them — Wright through fiction, Skloot through fact, the same America
The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien
The ethics of telling other people's stories — O'Brien and Skloot both grapple with what writers owe to the people they write about