Book in the Spotlight: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By Rebecca Skloot

A book that touches the heart and leaves its reader questioning their very existence, is indeed an excellent book. And this is that book.

There is a lot of scientific and political jargon that the reader needs to get through, but with patience, because you have to read that too in order to get the full scope of the book and the person you are reading about, it is mind and soul gripping.

It is the book of a strong, courageous woman that undergoes the tortuous struggle of cervical cancer and loses the battle with grace and dignity. But in the end, because she was a poor black woman and her family was never taken into consideration, she was stripped of her cancer cells by doctors to use for the study into cell regeneration--known as HeLa--the first immortalized cell line.

The cells were taken from a tumor biopsied during the treatment for her cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland in 1951 and cultured by George Otto Gey who created the cell line. These cells, known as HeLa are still being used today for medical research.

No one from Henrietta’s family ever knew the cells were being harvested, tested, and sold for research and use. There was much money made from the selling of these cells, but yet the family received none and they were so poor they could not even afford medical insurance.

This is a heartbreaking story of a woman dying and never knowing the great importance of her contribution to so many. And a family that nearly never knew the contribution her mother made to the world for so many people. This book will touch you so deeply that you will feel the need, in your heart, to thank this woman whom you will never know, but will no doubt play some role in your life.

Book in the Spotlight: The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale

By Margaret Atwood

This blog post was written by a guest writer. Enjoy their take on The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood:

I am not a reader of Margaret Atwood novels, but when I saw the television advertisements depicting this novel, I was quite intrigued.

The novel was written in 1985 and tells of how people’s lives were changed from a life of freedom, into a totalitarian life style.

As I was reading this novel, I became enthralled by it and could hardly put it down.  It makes one think what life could be like if this actually happened now in this day and age.  Women were being treated as baby mills to the state and life for these handmaidens was nothing but the realization that they were the vessels of the future generations.

It also brought to reality that this could easily happen.  Where life itself held no love between husband and wife, friendships nonexistent, women’s rights were no more...and women meant nothing.

We all want a book to grip us, but this book makes us look at our reality and question our own existence.  Margaret Atwood did an excellent job in making the reader think about how we would feel if our own world were to change...and not change for the better. 

This book brought a fear to myself and made me question my importance in this world.  Women have a hard battle being heard and made equal in society.  This book strips all equality from a woman and belittles her importance.  It demoralizes our very existence and freedoms we have long ago fought for.

My rating for this book out of 5....would be 4.5.  It is well written and thought provoking.  Pick it up when you get a chance. You will not be disappointed. 

Book in the Spotlight: Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

for this blog post, i am going to talk about milk and honey by rupi kaur. you may be wondering why i am writing this in all lowercase. the answer is because that is how this book is written. in all lowercase and no punctuation other than a period. which is obviously grammatically incorrect but to celebrate this book, i am going to write this post in all lowercase (i have to add punctuation though. my inner editor won't let me take this too far).

first off, why does rupi kaur write in all lowercase? to figure out the answer to this, i had to do some digging and i was quite interested in the answer i found. the following is the explanation she has posted on her website:

"although i can read and understand my mother tongue (punjabi) i do not have the skillset to write poetry in it. to write punjabi means to use gurmukhi script. and within this script there are no uppercase or lowercase letters. all letters are treated the same. i enjoy how simple that is. how symmetrical and how absolutely straightforward. i also feel there is a level of equality this visuality brings to the work. a visual representation of what i want to see more of within the world: equalness.

and the only punctuation that exists within gurmukhi script is a period. which is represented through the following symbol: |

so in order to preserve these small details of my mother language I include them within this language. no case distinction and only periods. a world within a world. which is what i am as an immigrant. as a diasporic punjabi sikh woman. it is less about breaking the rules of english (although that’s pretty fun) but more about tying in my own history and heritage within my work."

rupi's reasoning is quite interesting in my opinion.

so let's dive into this review, shall we? what is this book about? well, it's a poetry book! i'm amazed at how popular this book has become, and how quick! poetry is beautiful and the fact that so many young people have picked up this book and are reading it is amazing. bravo, rupi.

rupi's writing is, well...different. instead of using crazy metaphors, personifications, and analogies in her poetry, rupi keeps it simple. she has written this book in a way that millennials will understand and not some ridiculous shakespearean language that no one understands this day in age.

she has poured out her life into milk and honey. the back cover explains that it is her journey of life through poetry. milk and honey is broken down into four sections, "the hurting," "the loving," "the breaking," and "the healing." each chapter serves as an explanation to different pains and have different purposes. this book explores the depths of femininity, love, loss, rape, violence, pain, anger, heartache, and abuse. 

although the way the poetry is written isn't exactly mind-blowing, it does get the younger generation reading. the variety in rupi's work can speak to anyone and readers may relate to several of the poems in this collection.

i enjoyed how there are illustrations within the text that were drawn by the author herself. the pictures add another depth of emotion and correlate with the poems extremely well.

i give milk and honey a four out of five stars. i enjoyed it because it is easy to understand and follow, it is an easy and fast read, people can relate to it, and it has gotten so many people reading. also, because rupi kaur first self-published the manuscript! :D

what do you think of milk and honey?

Tinni...what?!

How weird is it to go from being told you are completely healthy to being told you've had cancer for 20-something years? Well, I can tell you first-hand that it is extremely weird. But that's not what I want to get into today--rather something that was brought on by this strange cancer diagnosis of mine.

I was always able to hear well. My ears worked fine (my eyes on the other hand, well, I've always been pretty much blind). I actually thought my hearing was one of my better senses...until chemotherapy.

Now, I'm not an oncologist so I may have some details of this post wrong. Please don't think I know everything about Neuroblastoma treatment (truth is, I don't). I only know my case. 

During my treatments, I was given extremely high doses of a chemotherapy drug called cisplatin. Little did I know at the beginning of treatments that this drug would cause my inner ear to create 24/7 constant ringing. You know when you go to a concert and you're standing close to a speaker and you get the buzzing and ringing in your head for a few hours or days? I have that ringing constantly--for almost three years now. That is the best way I know how to describe it (or a table-saw!). This ringing is called tinnitus and although it is "invisible" to others, it is extremely debilitating.

Along with my tinnitus, I developed hearing loss from the cisplatin. Not everyone that has cisplatin develops a hearing impairment, but, of course, I had to be one of the people who did! 

For several months during my treatments, my tinnitus and hearing loss caused me to become extremely depressed. I would be in a hospital bed for weeks at a time and cry every single night because of the noise in my head/ears that just would not go away. It caused me to not be able to sleep which created even more depression and it was an endless cycle.

I was often frustrated because of having to constantly ask people to repeat themselves when they would talk and would fake a laugh or force a smile when someone would tell me that I said "what?" too much. But, the truth of the matter was that I was irritated more because I honestly could not hear them over the ringing! 

The depression would, and still does to this day, sink in when people become "annoyed" when I ask them to repeat themselves. If someone was in a wheelchair and asked for help, people wouldn't think twice about helping them. So, just because a hearing disability isn't visible, doesn't mean you should make a person feel like an annoyance.

To this day, I brush it off. I'm the "deaf" friend who isn't quite deaf enough to be considered completely "disabled", but I'm not "hearing" enough to be considered "normal." So, where does this put people like me? We're in the middle. And that's okay. It's okay to be different whether it's because of a physical cause like mine or something else!

Be proud of who you are and what you've overcome. Be proud that you are unique and you have so much to offer the world. Own your tinnitus, whatever your "tinnitus" might be.