Journeys to the American South and Contemporary China

I can’t stop recommending two recent non-fiction books that I read in the past month: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Country Driving: A Journey from City to Country by Peter Hessler. Both works are ostensibly journalistic endeavors, the first about the woman whose cancerous cells became the famous HeLa cells used for cancer research today, and the second about development and life in contemporary China. While these are seemingly disparate topics, Skloot and Hessler share a similar strategy in their reporting. They both inject themselves into their stories so that their narratives are more memoir-esque than typical journalism. But they do this extremely well to uncover new insights into their subjects.

Henrietta Lacks was a thirty year old black woman with cervical cancer who checked herself into Johns Hopkins hospital in 1950. When her physician discovered that her cancer was rapidly spreading, he took a sample without her knowledge. His lab soon discovered that these cells could easily replicate in culture. They became the first immortal line of human cells. Soon, these cells found themselves in labs all around the world, influencing polio research, cancer research, and even HIV research. Skloot remains silent in the narrative about Lacks’ life and the scientific community’s use of her cells. But Skloot injects herself in the narrative to introduce another theme to the story: that of race. Skloot, a white student of science and aspiring journalist decided after college to track down the story of Henrietta Lacks. She read up on all previous journalistic reports of Henrietta Lacks and tracked down Lacks’ doctors. This research is evident throughout the book. But the final thing for Skloot to do was track down Lacks’ family; her husband and children were still living, and Skloot knew that they were the missing piece in telling the complete story of Henrietta Lacks.

So Skloot drove down to Lacks Town in rural Virginia to find Deborah, Henrietta’s daughter. Here, the book becomes more of a memoir. Skloot chronicles the difficulties of getting Lacks’ relatives to speak to her, but along the way, learns of just why they were so secretive. Once word got out in the late 1970’s that Henrietta was the provider of HeLa cells, everyone wanted a piece of the Lacks family. By the time Skloot came around in the early 2000’s, the family had become jaded. Skloot weaves the family’s mistreatment into Henrietta Lack’s story as an illustration of racial disparities in the US. Skloot’s close relationship to the family, however, also shows that she is not merely using them, but recording a version of the Lacks’ family history, as they would like.

Similarly, Country Driving tells the personal stories of the many people Peter Hessler encounters on the road as he drove around China in the past eight years. These aren’t people with many tangible records or documents, but regular migrants, village politicians, and museum guides who have all been affected by China’s incredible change over the past fifteen years. The book is divided into three sections: first, Hessler takes weekend trips from Beijing to Inner Mongolia, following the Great Wall; second, he purchases a second home in the rural suburbs of Beijing to write and finds himself involved in village politics and development; third, Hessler travels to southern China to witness the growth of factories and emergence of cities in formerly sparsely inhabited mountains.

While each section could stand by itself, they together tell a story of change. The Inner Mongolia chapter sets up China’s rich history well by discussing the Great Wall and China’s long history of keeping foreigners out. This tradition contrasts nicely with Hessler’s experience of traveling in Inner Mongolia where people were friendly towards his foreign face and mostly couldn’t care less about the history the Great Wall represented. The second section shows how China’s economic growth affects one family. After moving to Sancha, the rural village near Beijing, Hessler befriends the Wei family. Though their annual income starts at 150 dollars a year when Peter first meets them, it grows to 800 a year by the end of their acquaintance five years later. In that time, the government built a paved road to Sancha, which helped the Weis launch a food business. But as the family’s wealth grows, their unease does as well. The father of the family smokes and becomes more controlling of the wife, while the son gets overweight and watches more television. But Hessler doesn’t mock them, only describing how rational decisions got the Weis to where they were. Finally, the last section shows an entire region’s growth and the individual spirit that forms its base. In Zhejiang province, Hessler meets Boss Wang who starts a factory that produces bra parts. Hessler describes the migrant workers who come to seek jobs with compassion and humor, likening the booming factory industry in China to the booming factory industry during the American industrial revolution. It’s an era where people are still playing by the ear and ingenuity is rewarded.

While Hessler’s descriptions of Inner Mongolia and his attempts to navigate Chinese highways occasionally carry a comedic travelogue tone, his book accomplishes a serious task. He tells individual stories that reveal China’s heterogeneity while painting an overall image of a country still making up its mind about what it wants to be.