image source: amazon.com
I am currently reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, a very interesting book so far. I don't often read nonfiction but I do enjoy it. I have heard a lot about this book and decided to finally read it.
My favorite quote at this point is about a woman who worked with the HeLa cells every day in a lab. When Henrietta died and the scientist was presented with her dead body, she had an interesting reaction:
"Then Mary's gaze fell on Henrietta's feet, and she gasped: Henrietta's toenails were covered in chipped bright red polish.
"When I saw those toenails," Mary told me years later, "I nearly fainted. I thought, Oh jeez, she's a real person. I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom painting those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we'd been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I'd never thought of it that way." " Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
It reminds me how we tend to depersonalize things; I guess it just makes some things easier to do.
Other Stuff I'm Reading:
I've decided to expand these Wednesday posts to include articles and other tidbits that I find interesting. Today that's just one article.
As a woman who has chosen to be child-free, this appealed to me.
What are you reading?
