This is from the Freedom Now Suite by Max Roach. It doesn't get anymore intense that this voice (Abbey Lincoln) and drum (Max Roach) duet. I had the opportunity to experience a live performance back in 1968—I will never forget it. Never.
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rehd-xBOXCQ
Three US special forces soldiers were killed in northwest Pakistan this week, confirming that the US military is more deeply engaged on the ground in Pakistan than previously acknowledged by the White House and Pentagon (see " The Secret US War in Pakistan," November 23, 2009). The soldiers died Wednesday in Lower Dir when their convoy was hit by a car bomber in what appeared to be a targeted strike against the Americans. According to CENTCOM, the US soldiers were in the country on a mission to train the Pakistani Frontier Corps, a federal paramilitary force run by Pakistan's Interior Ministry that patrols the country's volatile border with Afghanistan. A Pakistani journalist who witnessed the attack said that some of the US soldiers were dressed in civilian clothes and had been identified by their Pakistani handlers as journalists. The New York Times estimates that there are sixty to a hundred such US special forces "trainers" in Pakistan. Capt. Jack Hanzlik, a spokesman for the United States Central Command said there are about 200 US military personnel in Pakistan.
While the deaths of the soldiers has sparked impassioned discussion in Pakistan about the extent of the US military presence, the Pentagon has emphasized that the US soldiers were in Pakistan on a training mission at the invitation of the Pakistani government, saying they were not engaged in direct combat.But the geography of Wednesday's attack--in the northwest of the country in an area where the US has no on-the-ground aid presence and where Pakistani forces have struggled against the Taliban and other insurgents--reveals just how close to the epicenter of the action in Pakistan the US military is. According to CENTCOM, the soldiers were not members of Delta Force or the Green Berets, instead classifying them as "civil affairs" trainers. Officially, CENTCOM describes this mission as part of an expanding "partnership with the Pakistani military and Frontier Corps," providing "increased US military assistance for helicopters to provide air mobility, night vision equipment, and training and equipment--specifically for Pakistani Special Operations Forces and their Frontier Corps to make them a more effective counter-insurgency force."
In military parlance, these above-board US "training" forces operating under an unclassified mandate are "white" forces, while operatives working for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) would be classified as working on "black" operations, sometimes referred to as Special Mission Units. Since 2006, JSOC teams have operated in Pakistan in pursuit of "high-value" targets.
"What we're seeing is the expansion of 'white' Special Operations Forces into Pakistan," says a former member of CENTCOM and US Special Forces with extensive experience in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater. "As Vietnam, Somalia and the Balkans taught us, that is almost always a precursor to expanded military operations." The former CENTCOM employee spoke to The Nation on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the Pakistan operations. He characterized the US military's role with the Pakistani Frontier Corps as "training in offensive operations," but rejected the idea that at this stage these US trainers would cross the line to engage in direct combat against Taliban forces. That does not mean, he says, that US military forces are not fighting in Pakistan. "Any firefights in Pakistan would be between JSOC forces versus whoever they were chasing," he said. "I would bet my life on that."
What has gone largely unmentioned in the media coverage of the deaths of the three US soldiers in Pakistan is the role private contractors are playing. While the New York Times reported that "The Americans' involvement in training Frontier Corps recruits in development assistance was little known until Wednesday's attack," The Nation first reported on that program--and the US involvement in training the Frontier Corps--last December. A former Blackwater executive told The Nation that Blackwater was training and advising the Frontier Corps, working on a subcontract with Kestral Logistics, a Pakistani firm. The presence of the Blackwater personnel in Pakistan was shrouded from the public, the former executive said, because they worked on a subcontract with Kestral for the Pakistani government. At times, he said, Blackwater forces cross the line from trainers or advisers and actually participated in raids. "That gives the Pakistani government the cover to say, 'Hey, no, we don't have any Westerners doing this. It's all local and our people are doing it,' " said the former executive. "But it gets them the expertise that Westerners provide for [counterterrorism]-related work." After the US soldiers were killed on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility and said the dead men worked for Blackwater. "We know the movement of US Marines and Blackwater guys," said Taliban spokesperson Azim Tariq. "And we have prepared suicide bombers to go after them." The United States dismissed the claim about Blackwater as "propaganda and disinformation."
While the former CENTCOM employee said the US military's training mission in Pakistan (he is against using contractors for such missions) is in the "US interest," he cautioned that there is growing concern within the military about what is perceived as the disproportionate and growing influence of JSOC's lethal "direct action" mentality on the broader Special Forces operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As The Nation reported in November, JSOC operates a parallel drone bombing campaign in Pakistan, carrying out targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action. JSOC, a military intelligence source told The Nation, also operates several secret bases inside Pakistan. These actions are deeply classified and not subjected to any form of comprehensive oversight by Congress.
With General Stanley McChrystal, who commanded JSOC from 2003-2008, running the war, forces--and commanders--accustomed to operating in an unaccountable atmosphere now have unprecedented influence on overall US military operations, opening the door for an expansion of secretive, black operations done with little to no oversight. "The main thing to take away here is a recognition and acceptance of the paradigm shift that has occurred," says the former CENTCOM employee. "Everything is one echelon removed from before: where CIA was the darkest of the dark, now it is JSOC. Therefore, military forces have more leeway to do anything in support of future military objectives. The CIA used to have the ultimate freedom--now that freedom is in JSOC's hands, and the other elements of the military have been ordered to adapt."
The former CENTCOM member said that what is unfolding in Pakistan is part of the Bush-era philosophy, continued by the Obama administration, of "preparing the battlefield." He sketches out a pattern wherein "black" operations are followed by "white" operations and then conventional US forces. That "preparing the battlefield" justification was often used by the Bush administration to circumvent Congressional oversight of clandestine military operations, particularly when McChrystal was running JSOC. The CIA is legally required to brief the Intelligence committees on covert operations, while JSOC has traditionally operated outside the purview of Congressional oversight. "This allows the JSOC/Special Mission Units more freedom to expand or absorb traditionally CIA missions," he says. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Stephen Cambone "embraced this model--so have Obama and [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates--and it persists to this day." He added that "there is a deep, deep resentment" of the influence of JSOC within "the Special Forces community" under Admiral Eric Olson, commander of the Special Operations Command and Vice Admiral William McRaven, the current head of JSOC.
What is clear from Wednesday's attack on US soldiers in Pakistan is that the US military is becoming increasingly entrenched in the country. In late January in Washington DC, US and Pakistani military officials gathered under the umbrella of the "U.S.-Pakistan Land Forces Military Consultative Committee." According to notes from the meeting, they discussed CENTCOM's operations in Pakistan aiming to "enhance both U.S. and Pakistan Army COIN [counterinsurgency] capabilities" and "potential US COIN Center/Pakistan Army interactions." Among the participants were representatives of the Special Operations Command, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs--Pakistan Afghanistan Coordination Cell, the Office of Defense Representative--Pakistan and a Pakistan delegation led by Brigadier General Muhammad Azam Agha, Pakistan's Director of Military Training.
The United States does not publicly acknowledge US military operations in Pakistan. On CENTCOM's website, they are described in vague terms. "We will of course continue to target, disrupt, and pursue the leadership, bases,and support networks of Al Qaeda and other transnational extremist groups operating in the region," declares CENTCOM's Pakistan page. "We will do this aggressively and relentlessly."
Since President Obama's inauguration, the administration has downplayed the role of US military forces in Pakistan. In July, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said bluntly, "People think that the US has troops in Pakistan, well, we don't." On Wednesday, after the US soldiers' deaths, his tune changed dramatically: "There's nothing secret about their presence," he said. One thing is certain: as the situation in Pakistan becomes more volatile and the US military presence in the country expands, it will become increasingly difficult for the Obama administration to downplay or deny the reality that a US war in Pakistan is already underway.
About Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. more...Advertisement
This report is difficult to read and fully understand but the report is also important. We all have heard of the CIA, how many of us know about JSOC? Obama ran partially on a war reduction platform--between Pakistan and Afghanistan just the opposite is happening. Do we know what is being done by USA forces both in the name of the USA and incognito? Is war really inevitable? Must the USA always be at war with others?
>http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100222/scahill2
go to the bama love soul website and view all three parts of this interview with nneka.
>http://bamalovesoul.blogspot.com/2010/02/nneka-toazted-interview-video.html
AP – Shoshana Johnson poses for a picture in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010.
AP – Shoshana Johnson poses for a picture in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2010.
WASHINGTON – Shoshana Johnson survived gunshot wounds to both legs and 22 days as a prisoner of war in Iraq. Life wasn't so easy when she came home, either.
In a new book out this week, the 37-year-old single mother describes mental health problems related to her captivity and tells how it felt to play second fiddle in the media to fellow POW Jessica Lynch, who was captured in the same ambush.
"It was kind of hurtful," the former Army cook said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "If I'd been a petite, cutesy thing, it would've been different."
Johnson, the nation's first female black prisoner of war, said she felt she was portrayed differently because of her race, either by media outlets that chose not to cover her experience or those who portrayed her as greedy when she challenged the disability rating she was given for her post-traumatic stress disorder.
While the story of Lynch, then 19, remains firmly in the nation's collective memory from the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, far less attention has been paid to Johnson, then 30, and four male soldiers from the 507th Maintenance Co. from Fort Bliss, Texas, who also survived captivity.
Johnson was rescued by Marines, about two weeks after Lynch's rescue. Months after returning home, Johnson left the military and today is enrolled in culinary school. She lives in El Paso, Texas, with her 9-year-old daughter.
Johnson's book, "I'm Still Standing," is being released in time for Black History Month. Johnson said she hopes that by telling her story, she can set the record straight and bring attention to mental health issues affecting veterans.
The day of the 2003 ambush, Johnson and Lynch were among 33 U.S. soldiers in a convoy that got lost in Nasiriyah en route to Baghdad. Their journey, Johnson said, was hampered by broken-down vehicles and malfunctioning equipment. Eleven were killed — including Johnson's friend Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa.
Johnson asked to be medically discharged from the military in part because she felt other soldiers resented her over the attention her POW status attracted.
She's also struggled with depression and nightmares. At times it was so bad, she writes, that her daughter, who was 2 at the time Johnson was captured, asked Johnson's parents, "Why is Mommy crying all the time?"
In 2008, she checked herself into a psychiatric ward for a few days.
"Even when I came home, I didn't think I'd ever get better. I didn't think the issues I had would ever ease," Johnson said in the interview. "But as time goes on and I stick with my therapy, it has gotten easier, and I know if I keep on the right track, I'll be OK."
It was hard at first to admit to having PTSD, she said, because she thought of it as something that happened to Vietnam veterans.
"When they started throwing out that word when I came home, I was like, no, that's not me," Johnson said.
Today, Johnson is training to be a pastry chef so she can make wedding and birthday cakes.
"It would just be nice to be able to celebrate those special moments with people," she said. "After everything that's gone on, I think those kinds of moments are very special."
After successfully fighting to receive improved disability benefits stemming from her PTSD, she was later asked to serve on the Veterans Affairs Department's panel on minority affairs.
She speaks proudly of the other POWs in captivity with her and keeps in touch with them. She said they schedule annual POW exams — the Defense Department is studying the effects of captivity — at the same time in Florida so they can see each other.
Contrary to speculation, Johnson said she was never angry at Lynch or jealous of her.
"Jessica is my friend," Johnson writes. "I was her friend before the ambush and I'm still her friend now."
One of the most brutal things Johnson endured was a captor grabbing her chest. She tells in her book of mobs of Iraqi people coming to view her as a vehicle she was in traveled from town to town, with one villager slapping her and another spitting on her. But while the men endured beatings during the captivity, she said she was treated better.
She describes acts of kindness, too, by the Iraqis. One doctor operated on her legs, which she credits with allowing her to keep them. Another doctor early in her captivity whispered to her that a woman Johnson assumed was Lynch was alive, which provided comfort.
_____
On the Net:
Book site: http://www.simonandschuster.com/
Army account of attack on 507th Maintenance Co.: http://tinyurl.com/ylcm5e6
Sponsored by the Binghamton Center for Writers-State University of New York BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY MILT KESSLER POETRY BOOK AWARD GUIDELINES
with support from the Office of the Dean of Binghamton University's Harpur College of the Arts & Sciences
Contest Rules:
Announcing The Florida Review 2010 Editors’
Prizes in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry
$1000 Award and publication
Submit a group of 3-5 poems, one story, or one essay with a $15 reading fee
(which includes a year’s subscription), payable to UCF/Florida Review.
For each entry, include a cover letter with your name, address, phone
number, email address, and the title(s) of submitted work. Manuscripts must
include the title of the work on each page, but no identifying information
about the writer (name, email address, etc.). This is a blind read.
Writers may enter in more than one genre, but each additional submission
requires a separate envelope and entry fee.
Simultaneous submissions to other journals are permissible, but please notify
us if the work is accepted elsewhere.
All submissions will be considered for publication. Winners will be
announced in summer 2010. For notification, include a SASE.
Postmark DEADLINE: February 26, 2010
Submit to:
The Editors’ Award (Indicate Genre)
The Florida Review
Department of English MFA Program
PO Box 161346
University of Central Florida
Orlando, Florida 32816-1346
Please visit our website at: www.flreview.com
|
Poetry Chapbook Contest http://omnidawn.com/contest/chapbook.htm Elizabeth Robinson will judge the 2010 Omnidawn Poetry Chapbook Contest. Electronic and postal submissions will be accepted from January 1, 2010 to February 28, 2010. The 2010 Omnidawn Chapbook Poetry Prize is Omnidawn Publishing’s first annual contest, open to any poet writing in English. The prize includes $1,000, Fall 2010 publication by Omnidawn, and 100 complimentary copies of the chapbook. Manuscripts will remain anonymous until a winner is selected. The reading fee for each manuscript is $15.
Four Submission Options: You may choose one of the following submission options:
Deadline: —Manuscripts sent by postal mail must be postmarked between January 1, 2010 andFebruary 28, 2010.
General Guidelines: —This contest is open to all writers no matter how many books they have published. —Multiple submissions to this contest are acceptable, but each manuscript must be submitted separately, with a separate entry fee. —Please notify us of changes in your contact information with an email tosubmissions@omnidawn.com. —Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but please notify us with an email tosubmissions@omnidawn.com if your manuscript has been accepted elsewhere. —No revisions to submitted manuscripts will be considered. —Please do not enclose SASE for return of the manuscript; all pages will be recycled at the end of the contest. —Friends, colleagues, and students of the judge are not eligible to compete. —We will announce contest results by email, as well as at www.omnidawn.com/contest, and in advertisements in American Poetry Review, and Poets & Writers Magazine.
Submission Requirements for the Manuscript: —The manuscript must be in English. Translations are ineligible. However, we do understand and respect the fact that some poets may choose to use some words from other languages occasionally in their poems. This is acceptable. —Manuscripts must be 20 to 30 pages of poetry (not including the front matter). —The manuscript should be paginated, with a table of contents. —Please do not include any identifying information in the manuscript. —Please do not include any acknowledgements page, cover letter, or bio. —Include one cover page with title of manuscript only, and a second cover page with title plus your name, address, telephone number, email address, and where you learned about the Omnidawn chapbook contest (to the best of your recollection). —Individual poems in a contest manuscript may have been previously published in magazines, print or web journals, or anthologies, but the work as a whole must be original and unpublished. Self-published books are also ineligible. —We will announce the winner and finalists by email, and also atomnidawn.com/contest.
How We Judge—Each Manuscript is Read by at Least Two Editors: Identifying information will be removed from all manuscripts before they are sent to an editor. All manuscripts will be given a number to associate them with the contact information of their submitters. All personal identifying information will then be removed from manuscripts before these are forwarded to editors. The Omnidawn staff members who remove the identifying information are NOT involved in the reading process. All manuscripts will then be read by at least two different editors. Only Omnidawn's Senior Poetry Editor and Assistant Poetry Editors will read submissions, and these editors will not have access to the identities of the submitters. For the sake of avoiding any conflict of interest, if an editor believes that he/she recognizes the work of a colleague, student, or friend, then that manuscript is given to another editor. The editors will select the semi-finalists to be sent to the judge. The judge will then select the winner and five finalists. If the judge wishes to see additional manuscripts, she may request them; the judge is not, however, permitted to request specific manuscripts. Friends, colleagues, and/or students of the judge are not eligible to compete. The judge is not allowed to choose manuscripts that present a conflict of interest. Omnidawn abides by The CLMP Code of Ethics. The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses’ community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest. To that end, we agree to 1) conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our staff, editors, or judges; 2) to provide clear and specific contest guidelines -- defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and 3) to make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public. This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contests contribute to a vibrant literary heritage. Four Submission Options You may choose one of the following submission options: Procedures for each of these options are listed in detail below. Option 1: Procedure to submit both reading fee and manuscript on our web site. —Please read these directions before proceeding to the online submissions web page. You will find the button to direct you there at the end of this procedure. —The online submissions page has been tested for use with Internet Explorer 6.0 and above, Safari 2.0 and above, and all versions of Firefox. Earlier versions may also work. The latest versions of these programs are available for free on the Internet. Your Internet browser must be set to accept cookies and to allow pop-ups in order to use our online submission program. —When you go to our online submission program, you will be asked to fill out your contact information. There is a COMMENTS box available to you. Please use this box to tell us where you learned about the Omnidawn contest to the best of your recollection. You may also add other information you would like us to know, but please do not use this box to share any personal or publication history. Because we intend to read your work anonymously, personal or publication history will be deleted before your manuscript is sent to an editor. —You will be able to upload your manuscript on the submissions page. Manuscripts must be sent in one file, not multiple files. We prefer to receive manuscripts in .rtf (Rich Text Format). Most word processing programs can save files as .rtf by going to FILE—SAVE AS, and then choosing Rich Text Format in the FORMAT drop-down box. We will also accept MS Word .doc files. —To receive a copy of the winning chapbook you can add $2 to the cost of your submission for a total of $17, which will cover the postage and mailing costs, and we will make the SASE for you and send the winning chapbook to your address. —If you have problems with our website please send an email to service@omnidawn.com or call 510-237-5472. To begin electronic submission process, please click here. Option 2: Procedure to submit both reading fee and manuscript via postal mail: —If you would like a copy of the winning chapbook sent to your address you have two options: —Reading fee of $15 (or $17 with copy of winning chapbook) must accompany each submission. This can be either a check or money order. Make checks or money orders payable to Omnidawn. —Please do not send FED EX, UPS, or signature required USPS Mail envelopes; they will not be accepted. Checklist for submitting reading fee and manuscript via postal mail. 1. A check or money order made out to Omnidawn for $15 or for $17. 2. Include 20 - 30 pages of poetry in a manuscript with Table of Contents and pagination. Include one cover page with identifying info and where you learned about our contest (to the best of your recollection), and one cover page with title only. Do not include acknowledgements or cover letter. 3. Postal submissions should be sent to: Omnidawn Chapbook Poetry Prize
Option 3: Procedure to submit reading fee on our web site and manuscript via postal mail. —Please read these directions before proceeding to the online payment web page. You will find the buttons to direct you there at the end of this procedure. —Entry fee of $15 must be enclosed for each manuscript. If you would like a copy of the winning chapbook sent to you add $2 to the $15 entry fee for a total of $17 (which will cover cost of SASE, which we will make for you). —When you make your payment on our web site, print out two copies of the receipt, save one, and send the other with your postal submission. —Please do not send FED EX, UPS, or signature required USPS Mail envelopes; they will not be accepted.
Checklist for submitting reading fee on our web site and manuscript via postal mail. 1. Printed receipt for payment of $15 or $17 on our web site. 2. Include 20 - 30 pages of poetry in a manuscript with Table of Contents and pagination. Include one cover page with identifying info and where you learned about our contest (to the best of your recollection), and one cover page with title only. Do not include acknowledgements or cover letter. 3. Postal submissions should be sent to: Omnidawn Chapbook Poetry Prize To pay electronically choose one of the two "Pay Now" buttons at the top of the page after clicking here.
Option 4: Procedure to submit manuscript on our web site and reading fee via postal mail. —Please read these directions before proceeding to the online submissions web page. You will find the button to direct you there at the end of this procedure. —The online submissions page has been tested for use with Internet Explorer 6.0 and above, Safari 2.0 and above, and all versions of Firefox. Earlier versions may also work. The latest versions of these programs are available for free on the Internet. — Your Internet browser must be set to accept cookies and to allow pop-ups in order to use this program. —When you go to our online submissions program Step 1 will ask you to click a payment button. Skip this step and go to Step 2. —In our online submission program, you will be asked to fill out your contact information. There is a COMMENTS box available to you. Please type in this sentence: “I am sending payment by postal mail.” (Without this sentence, we will contact you to remind you to pay the reading fee.) Also please use this box to tell us where you learned about the Omnidawn contest to the best of your recollection. You may also add other information you would like us to know, but please do not use this box to share any personal or publication history. Because we intend to read your work anonymously, personal or publication history will be deleted before your manuscript is sent to an editor. —You will be able to upload your manuscript on the submissions page. Manuscripts must be sent in one file, not multiple files. We prefer to receive manuscripts in .rtf (Rich Text Format). Most word processing programs can save files as .rtf by going to FILE—SAVE AS, and then choosing Rich Text Format in the FORMAT drop-down box. We will also accept manuscripts in MS Word .doc files. —If you have problems with our website please send an email to service@omnidawn.com or call 510-237-5472. —Once you have filled out the contact information and uploaded your manuscript, write a check or purchase a money order made out to Omnidawn. You may either pay $15, which will NOT include a copy of the winning chapbook, or you can add $2 to the cost of your submission for a total of $17, which will cover the postage and mailing costs, and we will make the SASE for you and send the chapbook to your address. —Please do not send FED EX, UPS, or signature required USPS Mail envelopes; they will not be accepted. Checklist for submitting manuscript via web site and reading fee via postal mail. 1. Include a check or money order made out to Omnidawn for $15 or for $17. 2. Include a sheet of paper that has your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, and title of your manuscript. 3. Reading fee and contact info should be sent to: Omnidawn Chapbook Poetry Prize To begin electronic submission process, please click here.
|
I’ve been in many slums and many tent cities since day one. And I’ve always been impressed on how people quickly managed to go on with their lives. At the Ste Therèse Parc in Pétion-Ville I was amazed by how clean it was and how they had separated the camp in different sectors and assigned people in charge to make sure that it’s always clean. click for more
After locking my keys in the car, we had to stay a little longer at “Lakou 12 Janvye” till someone could bring me the spare keys. It’s always fun hanging out in thecamps latelty, I have never seen Haiti as peaceful and the people as hopeful. Here’s a short to share a part of their life.
A video report on one of the tent cities in Haiti.
>http://www.zaboka.net/2010/02/what-you-dont-see-in-the-news/
|
|||
|
The best book blurb I’m aware of came from Roy Blount Jr., who said about Pete Dexter’s 1988 novel, “Paris Trout”: “I put it down once to wipe off the sweat.” I’m not sure I know what that means. Was the sweat on Mr. Blount’s forehead? On the dust jacket? On the inside of his fogged-up reading glasses? But I like it.
Skip to next paragraph
From “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”Henrietta and David Lacks, circa 1945.
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS
By Rebecca Skloot
Illustrated. 369 pages. Crown Publishers. $26.
Related
Excerpt: ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ (March 3, 2010)
Second Opinion: A Lasting Gift to Medicine That Wasn’t Really a Gift (February 2, 2010)
Manda TownsendRebecca Skloot
I put down Rebecca Skloot’s first book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” more than once. Ten times, probably. Once to poke the fire. Once to silence a pinging BlackBerry. And eight times to chase my wife and assorted visitors around the house, to tell them I was holding one of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I’ve read in a very long time.
A thorny and provocative book about cancer, racism, scientific ethics and crippling poverty, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” also floods over you like a narrative dam break, as if someone had managed to distill and purify the more addictive qualities of “Erin Brockovich,” “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and “The Andromeda Strain.” More than 10 years in the making, it feels like the book Ms. Skloot was born to write. It signals the arrival of a raw but quite real talent.
The woman who provides this book its title, Henrietta Lacks, was a poor and largely illiterate Virginia tobacco farmer, the great-great-granddaughter of slaves. Born in 1920, she died from an aggressive cervical cancer at 31, leaving behind five children. No obituaries of Mrs. Lacks appeared in newspapers. She was buried in an unmarked grave.
To scientists, however, Henrietta Lacks almost immediately became known simply as HeLa (pronounced hee-lah), from the first two letters of her first and last names. Cells from Mrs. Lacks’s cancerous cervix, taken without her knowledge, were the first to grow in culture, becoming “immortal” and changing the face of modern medicine. There are, Ms. Skloot writes, “trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body.” Laid end to end, the world’s HeLa cells would today wrap around the earth three times.
Because HeLa cells reproduced with what the author calls a “mythological intensity,” they could be used in test after test. “They helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization,” Ms. Skloot writes. HeLa cells were used to learn how nuclear bombs affect humans, and to study herpes, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease and AIDS. They were sent up in the first space missions, to see what becomes of human cells in zero gravity.
Bought and sold and shipped around the world for decades, HeLa cells are famous to science students everywhere. But little has been known, until now, about the unwitting donor of these cells. Mrs. Lacks’s own family did not know that her cells had become famous (and that people had grown wealthy from marketing them) until more than two decades after her death, after scientists had begun to take blood from her surviving family members, without their informed consent, in order to better study HeLa.
Ms. Skloot, a young science journalist and an indefatigable researcher, writes about Henrietta Lacks and her impact on modern medicine from almost every conceivable angle and manages to make all of them fascinating. She reports, for example, on the history and science of cellular research, about its pioneers and its calumnies. But “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” resonates most as a complex and vital human document and a searching moral inquiry into greed and blinkered lives.
Ms. Skloot tells the story of Mrs. Lacks’s life, from those tobacco fields in small-town Clover, Va., to the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in the 1950s, where she was treated for her cancer, and where her cells were harvested. She follows the members of Mrs. Lacks’s family to East Baltimore, where many of them live today, still struggling with her complicated legacy. As one of Mrs. Lacks’s sons says: “She’s the most important person in the world, and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?”
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is packed with memorable characters, from quirky if brilliant early researchers to Nobel Prize-winning Nazi sympathizers to long-haired Rolling Stone reporters in the 1970s to a con artist known as Sir Lord Keenan Kester Cofield. (Just when you think things can’t get weirder, Judge Joseph Wapner — the “People’s Court” television judge — makes a cameo.)
Ms. Skloot is a memorable character herself. She never intrudes on the narrative, but she takes us along with her on her reporting, as she moves around the country in her battered, muffler-free black Honda. Her most complicated job is to get Mrs. Lacks’s family, who are tired of white people trying to pry information from them, to speak with her. She does eventually win them over. And Mrs. Lacks’s daughter Deborah is dead-on when she says to Ms. Skloot: “Get ready, girl. You got no idea what you gettin’ yourself into.”
Ms. Skloot writes with particular sensitivity and grace about the history of race and medicine in America. Black oral history, she points out, is full of stories about “night doctors,” men who could pluck black patients off the streets to experiment on their bodies. There was some truth behind those tales.
The author traces events like the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, in which poor and uneducated black men with syphilis were recruited and then allowed to die terrible and entirely preventable deaths, while doctors lied to them and kept life-saving penicillin from them. Ms. Skloot makes it abundantly clear why, when Henrietta Lacks’s family learned that her cells were still living, the images that ran through their minds were straight out of science-fiction horror movies.
Mrs. Lacks had another daughter, Elsie, who was deaf and mute and possibly retarded. Elsie was shipped off at a young age to Crownsville State Hospital in Maryland, formerly known as the Hospital for the Negro Insane, and died there at 15. Perhaps the most devastating moment in this book comes when Ms. Skloot, along with Deborah, finds a grim photograph of Elsie in the hospital’s records and uncovers some of the horrors of what life there must have been like.
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is also, from first page to last, a meditation on medical ethics — on the notion of informed consent, and on the issue of who owns human cells. When they’re in your body, it’s obvious — they’re yours. But once they’ve been removed? All bets are clearly off.
This is the place in a review where critics tend to wedge in the sentence that says, in so many words, “This isn’t a perfect book.” And “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” surely isn’t. But there isn’t much about it I’d want to change. It has brains and pacing and nerve and heart, and it is uncommonly endearing. You might put it down only to wipe off the sweat.
