The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Should Be Included As...

Immortal Learning Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks should be included as a work of summer reading for its model of literary merit and valuable entertainment. Skloot’s powerful message and use of literary devices should make her book common in a high–school classroom. Unlike the labs who classified her as simply â€Å"HeLa†, Skloot took the initiative to reveal who the woman of the immortal cells truly was. As stated by her daughter Deborah,â€Å"[e]verything [is] always just about the cells and [people] don’t even worry about her name and [if] HeLa was even a person† (Skloot 52). In order to achieve her purpose of revealing the immortal life of not only the cells but the person, Skloot uses ethos, pathos, and logos within her research of the Lacks and scientific community, to write her book accurately and sufficiently. Skloot is able to justify her story based on years of research and interviews, which a student can mock to write a research paper (to note, at the end of the book Skloot has 21 pages of notes to validate all sources of information). A example of this is regarding the Lacks family who questioned, â€Å"if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?† (9). In order to complete this book, Skloot had to explain herself and her research to them, while simultaneously forming â€Å"a deep personal bond† (7). Similarly, the author had to sift through medical journals and family reflections to