NOVEL THOUGHTS
………
CROWN, 2010
(available in paperback from Broadway, 2011)
IN THE 1950S, on a ward reserved for “colored” patients, scientists removed some cells from a cancer patient named Henrietta Lacks, a poor southern tobacco farmer, without her permission or knowledge. Grown in a culture, those cells, known as HeLa cells, have been reproducing for six decades and in such quantity that if you weighed them all they would surpass a hundred Empire State Buildings.
HeLa cells have been instrumental in medical research. They have been used to develop the polio vaccine, in cancer and virus research, and to advance in vitro fertilization and gene mapping. They were sent into space to test the effects of zero gravity and used in research on the health effects of nuclear explosions. HeLa cells have launched multibillion-dollar industries. But Henrietta Lacks’s family, unaware of her “immortality” for more than twenty years after her cells were first harvested, never shared in the bounty.
The author brings the reader back to Lacks’s hometown of Clover, Virginia, and the tobacco fields worked by Lacks and her ancestors, through the sordid history of medical experimentation on black people in America, to the modern laboratories where Henrietta Lacks’s immortality is sustained. Skloot raises questions about who is entitled to profit from the removal of body parts and how the public’s right to benefit from medical research can be balanced with the rights of the patient.
Skloot also explores the impact of this extraordinarily unusual legacy on Lacks’s descendants, especially her children. Her daughter, Deborah, was just an infant when her mother died and she struggled to understand the implications of the survival of her mother’s cells. Could she “know” things about her mother from the cells? Could scientists tell her, for example, what her mother’s favorite color was? Had her mother been killed for her cells? Had she been cloned? And, poignantly, why is it that the children of a woman so critical to modern medical research, whose cells have made astronomical profits for others, cannot afford health insurance?
Rebecca Skloot shared family recipes with us and explains how these dishes sustained her as she was writing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Skloot writes:
Chicken Diable was one of the first dishes I learned to cook. I was seven at the time. My grandfather was a chicken butcher and my father spent many childhood hours in his butcher shop, so learning to cook chicken as a child was something of a family tradition. My father cooked many chicken dishes, but Chicken Diable has always been my favorite comfort food, which is strange, since I’m not a big fan of honey and I won’t eat mustard (even small amounts of mustard seed) in any other dish because I can’t stand the taste of it. Chicken Diable is an incredible mix of honey sweetness, mustard tang, and earthy curry that creates an absolutely intoxicating aroma that will always smell like home to me.
Chicken Diable is an easy dish to prepare. Sometimes I grill instead of bake it, other times I marinate it all day before cooking it. But I always serve it with Caesar salad, one of my lifelong favorite dishes. My mother gave me this Caesar salad recipe several decades ago, and it’s the best I’ve ever had. I make this salad at least once a week—it’s wonderful either alone, with grilled chicken or salmon, or as a side with Chicken Diable.
I spent more than a year traveling and speaking about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks on my book tour, and any time my tour passed through a city where I had friends or family, my one request was a home-cooked meal of Chicken Diable and Caesar salad.
4 tablespoons butter, melted ¼ cup Dijon mustard ½ cup honey 2 teaspoons curry powder 1 medium (4-pound) chicken, skin removed, and cut into pieces |
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Pour butter into a 9 × 13-inch baking dish. Add mustard, honey, curry powder, and salt. Mix until smooth.
Roll chicken pieces in sauce to coat both sides. Bake approximately 45 minutes, until dark meat reaches 165 degrees, basting several times during cooking.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
NOTE: Although not recommended by the chef, cholesterol-free real egg product (such as Egg Beaters) may be substituted for the egg. Use the equivalent of one egg.
For the dressing 1 ounce anchovies, drained 2 cloves garlic, crushed 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce Juice of ½ lemon ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil 1 large egg (see note) |
For the salad 1 head romaine lettuce, rinsed, dried, and torn into pieces 1 15-ounce can pitted black olives 1 cup croutons ½–¾cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese |
To make the dressing: Put enough water into a small saucepan to submerge an egg, and bring water to a rolling boil.
While waiting for water to boil, place the dressing ingredients (but not the egg) into a blender and blend until smooth.
When water boils, remove saucepan from heat and gently submerge egg in water. Let stand for exactly five minutes. At five minutes, when egg is coddled, remove from water and crack egg into blender with the previously blended ingredients. Blend until smooth (more blending leads to thicker dressing, as desired).
To make the salad: In a large bowl, toss lettuce with the dressing, olives, croutons, and cheese (you can add more cheese to taste).
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
NOVEL THOUGHTS
“When we first chose this book, I thought: how much can one possibly write about HeLa cells?” says Jody McLeod of Bokklubben (Swedish for “book club”), in San Diego, California. “Well, what a surprise! It was interesting science and fascinating history spun into a thoroughly compelling story. Many in our group had worked with HeLa cells, but nobody knew the story behind them. We liked how Rebecca Skloot juxtaposed modern science with the lives of the impoverished, uneducated Lacks family, all while managing to avoid any hint of condescension.
“When Rebecca Skloot came to our local bookstore,” adds McLeod, “we asked her how she managed to re-create the dialogue and dialect so convincingly. She said she recorded everything and then transcribed it. It sounds authentic because it is! She didn’t intend to become a part of the story herself, but was drawn into it by her relationship with the Lacks’s youngest daughter, Deborah. Our club unanimously praised The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.”
Anjali Shah’s San Francisco Bay Area book club had “soul food”—chili and cornbread—when they discussed The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. “I wanted to serve food that was popular in the South since that’s where Henrietta Lacks grew up,” says Shah.
“The entire meal made us feel like we were in the South, and warmed us up as we were discussing the very poignant themes of the book: Henrietta’s life growing up in poverty, and her family’s history as slaves and field workers in rural Virginia.”