Voices, Micro and Macro, in Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

            Skloot creates a clear distinction between her overarching, naïve and inquisitive authorial voice, and the weary, suspicious, superstitious, yet still faithful voice of the Lack’s family.

           Skloot presents her authorial perspective as someone captivated by the image of Henrietta, her hidden identity as a person, and the abstract concept of her body continuing to perpetuate itself in tiny pieces across the globe. Sloot’s idealistic mission is a rotation between the body, the personality, and the lasting implications of personality on/in bodily remnants. She portrays her journey as one of persistence, embarked upon by others previously but always falling short of fulfilling her specific vantage point, always skirting the true access points. Skloot finds herself literally driving in circles around social circles that she is apart from, until someone reaches out, opens up to her, ever so slightly, growing Henrietta’s identity, bit by bit, like cell by cell.

            “Deborah’s Voice” is our first introduction to Henrietta’s real lasting legacy and influence in the world. Italicized, marked as both authorial and authoritative, rising above it’s marginalization, Deborah’s voice is a starting point, in a place of honor/dedication, reserved for her anger and loss. Deborah and Rebecca share the goal of discovering who Henrietta was, although their emotional motivations are degrees apart.

            Certain local diction patterns which are found in the Lacks family’s conversational speech, repeated as they are throughout the book, could come to be interpreted as figurative language. The unique usage (or grammatically correct mis-usage) of words begins to carry its own meaning in the context of the narrative. There is a consistent lack of possessive noun usage, especially in reference to Henrietta; Deborah refers to her mother’s shoes and clothes as her “mother shoes” and “mother clothes.” David Lacks, Henrietta’s husband, deals with inquisitions into what he terms his “wife cells” as opposed to his “wife’s cells.” In a sense, this seems to be symbolic of all the myriad, larger issues at hand throughout the entire work. What were Henrietta’s ultimate possessions? Did she have any functioning rights when it came to the treatment of her body, living or dead? Do her cells function as part of her identity? Do they somehow lay a claim to her identity? What are the implications in Henrietta’s cells now being labeled as “mother” and “wife” cells? What does it matter that to the scientific community they are merely a semi-personalized acronym?

            Sadly and ironically, all elements of Henrietta’s own cancer and treatment put the wholeness of her body on the fast track of death, while all efforts were made to indiscriminately maintain the life and reproduction of her cells after that untimely death. Henrietta had an awareness of the demise of her body which she summarized in simple terms; her tumor was “a knot”, her harsh chemical treatments a “spreading blackness.” To Henrietta, palpability was paramount, as was perpetuation in terms of her children, her own flesh and blood, not the strange spreading of her invisible cells. That her body could not produce another body was a real tragedy to her.

Die-hard Writing Habits

 I love a deep, usually somewhat dank, embedded, swallow-a-story-up-and-spit-it-back-out metaphor. This is why I think I may have found my niche in creative nonfiction; I can find themes and subjects in the outside world that keep (at least some elements) of my writing grounded in reality and logical structure, while incorporating the more lyrical, figurative language I write in order to indulge in. Whether it’s the all-consuming metaphor that shifts to suit all the minutia of the story, or brief baby metaphors that stream throughout the story, like carbonation from the bottom of a champagne glass, almost every writing project has to have one form or the other for me.

 In terms of methodology, I’ve always been an Outliner, albeit a loose outliner. To another reader/writer, they would probably seem unintelligible/illegible. There are usually Roman numerals and lower case letters; ideas are chopped into headings followed by key trigger words that are very often imagist, so that I can see the form that key narratives will take when supported with more conceptual, or scenic, portions that I could become too wrapped up in without any discretion. Loop-de-loops and dual-pointed arrows abound, and as the outline gets fervent, ideas are chicken scratched sideways, or squeezed between existing entries. The best outlines have a lifespan of 3-5 days, and some of the meatiest input is produced while I am halfway engaged in something else: listening to a lecture in class, or an author reading their own work is especially productive for me.

700 word Free Write

Inspired by:
"A Cry for the Tiger" by Caroline Alexander http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/12/tigers/alexander-text

"The Living Dinosaur: Peter Del Tredici's search for the wild ginko" by Jill Jones http://harvardmagazine.com/print/33356?page=all

Modeled after:
"Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist" by Paul Kingsnorth http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6599

Endangered Curiosity

Uproar, once upon…

How old was I when I heard The Sound? Or, how old was I when I imagined the sound, and reinforced the trembling phantasm of that sound, recording it in my psyche out of such desire to hear it, and fear it?

The day was clouded, but bright, a sky of general whiteness. I was seated at my grandparent’s laminate kitchen table, rimmed in tarnished brass grooves. In front of me could have been any miasma of meals my grandmother prepared for me as a child; simple, crisp things, like cucumber and onion salads, or buttered egg noodles. I faced the window, staring past the rolling lawn to the tree line, like up-ended black roots silhouetting the sky, the borderline where the wild things hung on.

Then the sound. The rasp. There was no echo; there was instead a ricochet, an auditory after-shock. The throatiness, the wheezing expulsion knew no proper metaphor in my mind, then or now.

I remember the presence of my grandparents in the kitchen; both standing, my grandfather walking about, somewhere in the peripheral. Did he have the shotgun? Did he step outside? I remember him astute, and assured, as always. Maybe it was my grandmother who answered that guttural call with the recognition, under her breath.

“Cougar.”

Miniature Uproar, for sure…

I had the dusty red lead wrapped in my grasp, holding it close to the silver ring of the halter. His nostrils began to flare and contract dramatically, like a fish’s mouth at the water’s surface. He was an Arabian horse, and those nostrils had served an ancient hot bloodline of some sheik’s steeds, suffering valiantly through sandstorms, sucking copious amounts of air in, shutting stinging sand out.

There was certainly no blowing sand or even fowl weather that evening outside of the Burgettstown stables. The snuffling was a fright (and subsequently flight) response from Sattann. That is pronounced “sa” “tawn”, an Arabic name whose meaning I don’t think I ever discovered. Most people were put off by it, looking as it did like a typo version of Satan, penned in thick black calligraphy on his registration papers. He was a dream come true to 11 year old me; oh, how many chores and years of riding lessons I had to have under my belt before we culled Sattann from the herd as my own.

While there was nothing Satanic about Sattann, he and I were not a match made in equestrian heaven either. Since he had arrived at the stable where I was to board him, Sattann’s ears were permanently pinned back; in horse language, like a perpetual “fuck you, I don’t like it here and I don’t like you so much either”. Beyond generally orneriness, we discovered Sattann had an intense phobia. Sattann was terrified to enter the door to his stall. He would freeze up, plant his hooves in the mud, try to back away. With more encouragement, he would begin to rear up, side step (often meaning 900 lbs plopping on my own foot), and commence an overall snorting, eye-rolling frenzy.

Did I mention yet that his stall overlooked an embankment and the footpath to said stall was barely wide enough for Sattann (who, while of a lithe, 15.1 hands in height, was still a 900 lb. horse) and my scrawny 11 year old self?

On this particular evening, I led Sattann from the dark, soft peat surfaced arena to the outside world, towards that precipice and the walk of terror. My father was there, tight-lipped, supervising as usual, finding it hard not to interfere. How far we were in that short walk I cannot recollect, when there was another sound.

Eerie, and right there, right over the lip of that hillside. Higher pitched, not quite as drawn, but oh so vicious still. Mean, mean meow.

Did we look to Sattann? Did we dare? I know we were plunged into dread, all three (or four) of us. I believe my father took the lead, literally; but while we both expected total ballistics from Sattann, falling to an awful fate finally, eaten even…he walked placidly into his stall. Perhaps that was his reaction to an all too realistic threat.

Down below, deep in the steaming pits where manure from twenty-some horses was always pitched, a bobcat lurked. My father identified it as such, but I can’t remember if he really peered down to see it with his own eyes.

"Unity is the shallowest, the cheapest deception of composition. In nothing is the banality of the intelligence more clearly manifested...ability in an essay is multiplicity, infinite fracture, the intercrossing of opposed forces establishing any number of opposed centers of stillness"
                                             
                                                   William Carlos Williams

Ideas for Final 1,000 Word Project

1. Lore and Land Lost; The Construction of I-79
         
     In due time, I will come to inherit a 10 acre plus patchwork of flora and fauna, at some stage in its unnaturally accelerated disruption and flux. I will be the 4th generation family property owner to adore its stands of sapling oak and sugar maple, tangles of invasive wild rose bushes, and uncommon gems like blue eyed grass and pileated woodpeckers. The greater part of the property is a steep ravine, which I slid down and scaled again in my childhood with effort akin to conquering Everest. Back then, I could capture upwards of 50 salamanders spanning 4 different species in a single May afternoon in the creek bed at the bottom of that hill. Now there are most likely more tires dotting the trickling waterway than spotted salamanders. That creek has slipped right under the heavy traffic of Interstate 79 since the 1960s, like a native Copperhead, squeezing past the obstacles of construction, desperate to escape the talons of development.

The immediate and long term environmental effects of the laying of I-79 are legendary in both spiritual and scientific realms, and these realms often overlap, from the ominous disruption of Native American burial grounds, to the final banishment of the secretive Eastern Mountain Lion. Just how much impact does a 2 lane highway, running North and South through two states, have on a historically rugged natural terrain?

This is a topic I've wanted to research for a while now...I think the history and scientific studies could be interwoven with my personal and familial input in a meaningful way. I can begin to envision a form something like a winding road, with clearly marked "Exits" that highlight the ecological/emotional impacts of the project.

2. Raccoon vs. Oil Tycoon: The future of Raccoon State Park

For this project I would consider taking a more journalistic/memoir-like approach. I would keep a strict birdwatching schedule and log (one of my favorite hobbies), and integrate a larger environmental issue the park is facing with my own acute observations of what the park has to offer in avian respects.

Raccoon Creek State Park is 7,572 acres including the 101 acre Raccoon Lake. It is a 20 minute drive from the hotel I work at, and many of my co-workers have lived adjacent to the park their entire lives. The fiance of a good long time friend of mine also grew up in that area, and is very concerned about environmental issues. Doug, who is a graduate from the Pitt writing program and Emerson college has had several articles published in the PPG addressing the subject of Marcellus Shale oil drilling. The area is currently teeming with oil company competition, and the rush to drill is rampant.

I'm hoping to work together with Doug, as we pursue our own separate projects, yet share resources and connections. Access to the perspective of my co-workers would also be a unique advantage and an opportunity to explore the tension between economic opportunities and environmental hazards that are implicit with the drilling operations.