The author, Rebecca Skloot, explains that the book is a work of non-fiction: “No names have been changed, no characters invented, no events fabricated.” She re-created Henrietta’s life using interviews, documents, and medical records. Skloot also says that she has recorded the dialogue of her interviewees exactly as they spoke in their native dialects; one of the interviewees specifically requested this for authenticity.

Skloot explains the identity of the book’s subject. Henrietta Lacks was a black American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951, leaving behind five young children. Before Lacks’s death, doctors took cells from her cervix, without her knowledge or consent, and used them for medical research. Known as the HeLa cells (pronounced hee-lah), Henrietta’s cells—the first human cells to stay alive in culture—contributed to some of the medical world’s most significant advances, including the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, and in vitro fertilization.

Skloot also explains her fascination with Henrietta Lacks:

I’ve spent years staring at [Henrietta’s] photo, wondering what kind of life she led, what happened to her children, and what she’d think about cells from her cervix living on forever—bought, sold, packaged, and shipped by the trillions to laboratories around the world (1).