The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2010

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Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Life”

Chapter 1 Summary

1951. The first chapter begins on January 29, 1951, as Henrietta visits John Hopkins hospital in East Baltimore. After the birth of her fourth child, Deborah, just over a year earlier, Henrietta told her cousins, Margaret and Sadie, that she was experiencing pain. She kept her pains quiet from her husband and had another child, Joe, in September, 1950. A few months after Joe’s birth, Henrietta experiences severe bleeding and, knowing for certain that she has a “knot” on her womb, she visits the doctor who refers her to John Hopkins, the only major hospital in the area that treats black patients. The gynecologist, Howard Jones, confirms Henrietta’s suspicions: she has a large, purple growth on her cervix.

Chapter 2 Summary

Chapter 2 goes back further in time to Henrietta’s childhood. She was born Loretta Pleasant in 1920 in a shack in Roanoke, Virginia—it is not known when or why she became Henrietta. When her mother died four years later, her father took his 10 children to Clover, Virginia, where his extended family worked as tobacco farmers. Henrietta spent the rest of her childhood with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks, who was also raising another grandchild—Henrietta’s cousin, David Lacks (known as Day), who one day would become her husband.

Henrietta, who was educated through sixth grade, enjoyed her childhood, surrounded by cousins and helping Grandpa Tommy on the farm. At the age of 14, she gave birth to Lawrence, her first child with Day, followed four years later by Elsie, who suffered from epilepsy and learning disabilities. Henrietta married Day when she was 20, and shortly afterwards, they moved to Turner Station, Baltimore, where Day worked at a steel mill. The mill had begun to flourish as the demand for steel increased during World War II.

Chapters 1-2 Analysis

Henrietta’s symptoms and hospital treatment are the beginning of a personal tragedy, but the story also tells us something about American society in the 1950s. We learn that Henrietta has kept quiet about her pain for over a year because “In those days, people didn’t talk about things like cancer” (14). Even more significant is the extreme racial segregation which is still the norm at this time: Henrietta and David have to drive 20 miles to get to John Hopkins because it is the only hospital in the area that accepts black patients. Even at John Hopkins, they are segregated into “colored wards” and must use “colored-only fountains”.

As we go back further in time to Henrietta’s childhood in the 1920s and 1930s, we are reminded of the country’s history of slavery: Henrietta’s father takes his children back to Clover, Virginia, “where his family still farmed the tobacco fields their ancestors had worked as slaves” (18). When Henrietta and her cousins accompany Grandpa Tommy to the tobacco auction in South Boston, the white farmers stay in comfortable accommodations upstairs, while black farmers must sleep on a dirty floor in the warehouse with the animals. This treatment ensures they remain at the bottom of the social scale, demonstrating the link between race and poverty. In both her childhood and adulthood, Henrietta lives in poverty, as does her extended family.