Rebecca Skloot

Character Analysis

More Than She Bargained For?

On her website, Rebecca Skloot tells readers that she never intended to wind up as a character in her book on Henrietta's life. She wanted it to be about the Lacks family and their journey to learn about their mother and wife. But from the moment she meets Deborah, things change.

She becomes entangled in the emotional life of the family and finds herself advocating for them rather than just reporting. And Deborah gets pretty attached to her as well, calling her "my reporter" and urging her to take a visible role in the book: "Don't you make me be in that book by myself! You're part of the story now too—Henrietta's gonna get mad and come get you if you try to leave yourself out of there!"

Ultimately, Skloot realizes that she's not just interested in Henrietta's story; she's actually part of it. As she and Deborah travel for research and Skloot works to establish The Henrietta Lacks Foundation to benefit the family and others who have been injured by scientific experimentation, she realizes that she's in pretty deep.

Humble Beginnings, Great Persistence

Skloot admits that she wasn't such an enthusiastic student: failing out of freshman year in high school and over her head in a community college biology class. (2)

But it only took one mention of Henrietta Lacks story from her biology teacher to create a spark and send her on a completely unexpected life path:

As I worked my way through graduate school studying writing, I became fixated on the idea of someday telling Henrietta's story. At one point I even called directory assistance in Baltimore looking for Henrietta's husband, David Lacks, but he wasn't listed. (6)

Her work with the Lacks family leads to many other connections, roads of research, and yes, spiritual encounters. Perhaps most importantly for Skloot, she crosses a barrier—not just racial, but also socioeconomic, religious, and philosophical.

Her relationship with the extended Lacks family truly expands her horizons, while testing patience and courage to their limits. Skloot finds that anyone who wants to be involved in Henrietta's story, and that includes us, has to be willing to get body-slammed by the truth.