Was blog-hopping today and came across a mention of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a book that was immediately was added to my to-read list.
Hilary Mantel reviewed it for the Guardian:
In old-fashioned museums you can see the unconscious benefactors of mankind, trapped in glass cases: the freaks and monsters of their day, the anomalies, sometimes skeletonised and entire, sometimes cut into parts and labelled. When we look at them, fascination and repulsion uneasily mixed, we bow our heads to their contribution to knowledge, but it is hard to locate their humanity. The thread of empathy has frayed and snapped. They have become objects, more stone than flesh: petrified, post-human.
Henrietta Lacks is a medical specimen of quite another kind. No dead woman has done more for the living, and yet we can imagine her easily from her photograph, a vivacious woman who was only 31 years when she died in 1951 in a “coloured ward” in Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Beloved by her family, a lively, open-hearted woman, Henrietta died in intractable pain, and at the autopsy her body’s interior was pearled by tumours. Towards the end she had been given only palliative treatment, but no one had explained this to her family, who still hoped she might be cured. She left behind a husband and five children, the youngest only a baby. But she also left behind a slice of tissue, a piece excised from the cervical cancer that was her primary tumour. From this sample her cells were cultured.
Previously, researchers had found it frustratingly difficult to keep alive fragile human cell lines, but these cells were robust and multiplied at an astonishing rate. In the years following Henrietta’s death, the cell line, by laboratory convention known as HeLa, became an unparalleled research tool. Cells were sent to laboratories through the world, bought and sold by research teams. They could be frozen, and their development paused and restarted. Because of them, thousands of experiments on live animals were not needed. Trillions of them are still alive, more than ever grew in Henrietta’s living body. They have been employed in research into the polio vaccine, and into the effects of atomic warfare; they were shot into space, used in AIDS research. But the woman who generated them, frequently misnamed, remained largely unknown, and her family benefited not at all from the unwitting donation of her money-spinning tissues.
I am thunderstruck by this story, truly. And though there has been tremendous benefit from it, I am appalled by the way this poor, black woman’s person was exploited without her knowledge or consent, and I look askance at recent moves to “honour” her contribution to modern medicine and science. I find the whole thing more than slightly disquieting.
If you’re interested, there’s more at Wikipedia about Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cells, and you can read an excerpt from the book at the New York Times website.
Celebrating black women in love:
Black Love Poster.
I will be seeing the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre on October 19th. I am excited beyond words.
Somewhat depressingly, each Caribbean-born scholar tends to concern himself almost exclusively with the island of his birth, thus fulfilling that fondest of European imperialist hopes for the region: that no Caribbean person ever develop a pan-Caribbean outlook…
Paper Places – Alice by Brianna McCarthy
This paper collage is by young Trinidadian artist Brianna McCarthy. See more of her gorgeous, gorgeous work over at her blog Passion. Fruit.
I’ve been trying to write bits and pieces of drafts of things that will eventually become part of my thesis. Today I put one of those bits and pieces into the I Write Like analyzer and got this:
H. P. Lovecraft was:
an American author of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction.
Lovecraft’s guiding literary principle was what he termed “cosmicism” or “cosmic horror”, the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien.
So. Yes. I don’t know. Should this be a cause for concern?
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Self Portrait with Purple Socks
For those travelling to the West Indies from Europe by the Elder and Fyffe line, Barbados is the first West Indian island and for many it must, as an introduction to the tropics, be a disappointment… It takes time to appreciate its particular and peculiar charm, its “lived-in” atmosphere.
…
Its lack of history has made Barbados unique. It has also given it a personal intimate charm that none of the other islands have to the same extent.
— from The Sugar Islands, Alec Waugh (1949)
Nom Fwigè “is a short film by Pierre Deschamps and Paul Crask about a day in the life of a tree fern mask carver who lives with his family in the Kalinago Territory village of Mahaut River, Dominica.” I can’t embed, so click here to watch it on Vimeo.
I regretted missing the Edinburgh International Film Festival last year (I was in Dominica). This year I’m planning to see:
- Crab Trap: South American cinema’s current resurgence isn’t limited to Argentina and Brazil – young Colombian writer-director Ruiz Navia has made a major splash with this accomplished debut. Set in a remote village wedged precariously between jungle and ocean, it follows an itinerant incomer as he observes and explores his alluring but disturbing environment.
- Pressure: As London school-leaver Tony attempts to secure employment, he becomes entangled in boiling cultural tensions between the white establishment and his Jamaican background. Still the seminal portrait of the pressures faced by immigrants in Britain, this remains a caustic denouncement of institutional racism. Raw performances and confrontational politics power the first British film made by a black director … do not miss out.
- Soul Boy: Originating from a workshop led by Tom Tykwer (Perfume, The International, Run Lola Run), this disarmingly gentle debut from Ghanaian-Kenyan director Essuman combines supernatural myth and the hard-scrabble realities of big-city Nairobi, as a teenage lad performs seven tasks to save his (apparently) curse-stricken dad. The real magic, however, is in the script which intelligently explores a dizzyingly wide range of pressing issues, all within the most accessibly economic of packages.
- A Small Act: Chris’ life in a Kenyan village was transformed when he won the sponsorship of a Swedish woman – Hilde Back – who he knew only by name. Now a graduate from Harvard and a Human Rights lawyer working for the UN, he has set up his own education programme for Kenyan children in her name. Weaving between the lives of Chris, Hilde and three children competing for Chris’ fund, this is a moving testament to the selfless act of giving.
I also wanted to see Superhero Me (Mild-mannered documentary filmmaker Steve Sale sets out to become a bona-fide superhero, with absolutely hilarious results…) because I saw a promo for it being filmed on the Mound yesterday and was intrigued by the grown man running around in a yellow, red and blue superhero costume, tights, cape and all. But it’s screening a bit too late at night for my comfort, so I’ll give it a miss. And I’m sad that I missed Thunder Soul (Straight out of a high school in Texas, the electrifying Kashmere Stage Band was the brainchild of gifted music teacher Conrad Johnson. Johnson’s dynamic arrangements transformed the idea of the high school band, and brought his students worldwide recognition.); I’ll be looking for that one on DVD.
I thought I was scheduled to leave Barbados on the 15th. Turns out I was scheduled to arrive in Scotland on the 15th, i.e. departing Barbados on the 14th. When did I realise this? Six hours before flight time. Lovely.
Am in Edinburgh now. It’s 18ºC outside. I had forgotten what it’s like to live in a place where 18ºC is considered warm.
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