Parent asks to ban "Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"

[Deleted]

Apparently one description of self-exploration = pornography for 15 year olds.


www.yahoo.com/parenting/mom-launches-war-against-bestselling-book-about-128725553532.html

In her fight to get this book banned from her son’s school, one mom is calling the text “pornographic.” (Photo: Broadway Books)



A mother in Knoxville, Tenn., is challenging her son’s summer reading book, calling the non-fiction title, written by a former science reporter, “pornography.”



The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by author Rebecca Skloot, is about a poor African-American women who died of cervical cancer. While being treated at Johns Hopkins, her cells were taken without her consent and those cells, called HeLa cells, were the first to reproduce in culture. They have been responsible for some incredible medical breakthroughs, including in vitro fertilization and the polio vaccine.



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But Jackie Sims, mother of four children, one of whom was assigned to read Henrietta Lacks for 10th grade at L & N STEM Academy in Knoxville, tells Yahoo Parenting she was “shocked at the graphic content in the book.” Specifically, she cites the description of Lacks finding a tumor on her cervix, caused by a sexually transmitted disease, in which she “slid a finger inside herself and rubbed it across her cervix until she found what she somehow knew she’d find: a hard lump, deep inside, as though someone had lodged a marble just to the left of the opening to her womb.”



Sims says she was taken aback when she read that sentence, among a few others. “My mouth dropped,” she says. “I understand the story is about cancer and I’ve read the book, but for a 15-year-old to read this kind of graphic material — if it was a chat room and someone was typing these words, we would think it was a predator and the adult would go to jail. It’s pornography to me. I understand the context of why [Lacks] was doing this, but I’m an adult.”



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After voicing her complaint to the school district, Sims’ son was provided with alternate reading, Phineas Gage by John Fleischman. Now Sims wants Henrietta Lacks taken off the Knox County Schools’ reading list entirely.



“There’s good in this book, I’m not saying there isn’t,” she says. “But to take this material and put in the hands of a 15-year-old, it’s just too much. Knox County Schools has adopted a policy that states if there is explicit sexual content or reference to drug use — and in this book, shooting heroin is talked about — then it’s not to be used in the curriculum. They are violating their own policy. There are so many other good books out there, so why do we have this in the hands of our children?”



Author Rebecca Skloot has addressed Sims’ opposition to her book, reminding fans that Banned Book Week, which celebrates literary freedom and opposes censorship, is coming up at the end of the month. “Just in time for #‎BannedBooksWeek, a parent in Tennessee has confused gynecology with pornography and is trying to get my book banned from the Knoxville high school system,” Skloot writes on Facebook. “Fortunately many other local parents seem to disagree with her, as do other schools throughout the US. Just yesterday, I got a letter from the head of the Science Department at Notre Dame Academy in Kentucky, a Roman Catholic High School for girls, saying, ‘Our community shared experiences and had many discussions concerning the topics raised in the book. The student body and staff have learned a great deal from the story of the Lacks family, and as a token of appreciation, please accept this donation to the Henrietta Lacks (aka HeLa) foundation,’ of funds raised by students and staff. I choose to focus on those stories, and I hope the students of Knoxville will be able to continue to learn about Henrietta and the important lessons her story can teach them. Because my book is many things: It’s a story of race and medicine, bioethics, science illiteracy, the importance of education and equality and science and so much more. But it is not anything resembling pornography.”



Parents, students, and even staff at the school have publicly supported Skloot. Jimm Allen, assistant principal at L & N STEM Academy, responded on Facebook to Skloot’s post, writing, “Know that the book and teachers have the complete support from the administration of the school. It’s an amazing book that fits with our STEM curriculum better than almost any book could!” He later added, “The parent in question is still very happy with our school. She simply has strong convictions about this book that, evidently, many people do not share, including me. I would like to think that our teachers and parents come at these situations from a place of love and wanting to do what is best, even as misguided as we may think that they may be.”



Another student who read the book wrote, “I go to the school in question … where this mother has her tirade. I personally read your book last year during my sophomore year and I absolutely love the book. … We used your text in my English class in which we went into great lengths to understand all the concepts that you had [described] and we [discussed] the emotions behind the text as well. This year we will touch on your book in my biology class from a scientific biological outlook. … I support your text and I will stand with you to keep this book because more people need to read this great text.”



Sims, who is a former elementary school teacher, says that she believes in literary freedom, but that it should come with age. “There are certain freedoms that come as we get older — we don’t vote before 18, we don’t drink before 21, and our job as adults is to provide discussions for our children and help them understand and comprehend things without using the words this author chooses, and to protect what they see and do,” she says.



As for Skloot, she is celebrating what many of her fans say is the ultimate sign that she’s hit the big time. Wrote one user, “You are in some fine company. It’s always groundbreaking books that broach topics that make a small, ignorant but vocal minority uncomfortable that get banned.” Skloot’s response: “#YouKnowYouveMadeItWhen!”

[darnkatz]

I would be thrilled if my kid was required to read that book for school. It is amazing.

[josieposy]

Every time I see another story about this book it reminds me to read it. I have a copy on my shelf even!

[Cicero]

pandce.proboards.com/thread/475893/immortal-life-henrietta-lacks

To link up with discussion from a couple days ago...

[onomatopoeia]

This is a topic on my local facebook group, and everyone is pretty aghast at the idea banning it. However, some moms are saying that it's not really appropriate for kids in grade 9 and 10 because the kids they know in those grades who have read it (it's required in grade 10 here) are so disgusted by certain descriptions (the decaying cervix was one) that the broader point of the book isn't really resonating with them.

I thought that was weird. Isn't the whole point of requiring kids to read books like this, books that are a bit out of their comfort zone, to kind of teach them (or guide them to) the broader point? Discuss the uncomfortable parts, and get into the moral, ethical, and legal implications and the societal constructs and the etc, etc, etc? I mean, it might be hard to read about, but this woman lived it.

[eclaires]

I'd like to point out - AGAIN - that this woman has her child in a STEM Charter high school.

We're a nation of actual morons.

[W.T.Faulkner]

Sept 11, 2015 11:43:52 GMT -5 onomatopoeia said:

I thought that was weird. Isn't the whole point of requiring kids to read books like this, books that are a bit out of their comfort zone, to kind of teach them (or guide them to) the broader point? Discuss the uncomfortable parts, and get into the moral, ethical, and legal implications and the societal constructs and the etc, etc, etc? I mean, it might be hard to read about, but this woman lived it.

Yes. If we sacrifice this larger goal to placate idiotic parents, we're complicit in raging a nation of morons.

[wise_rita]

Fuck any and everybody who censors books!!!!!

[sushi]

At that age I read I know why the cghed bird sings.

It has a graphic scene of incest.

It allowed me to understand a friend better.

Go away, thought police

[NewOrleans]

How is a medical self-examination inappropriate or even possible to consider dirty? I mean, if she is another anti-intellectual and wants to raise her is as such, I can't do anything about that. But she wants to make that choice for all the other kids, too. Dumbfuck

[Deleted]

Sept 12, 2015 7:02:28 GMT -5 NewOrleans said:

How is a medical self-examination inappropriate or even possible to consider dirty? I mean, if she is another anti-intellectual and wants to raise her is as such, I can't do anything about that. But she wants to make that choice for all the other kids, too. Dumbfuck

I know, right? Wtf?

From a medical standpoint, knowing your body is a good thing.

I guess this lady is also against self breast exams?! Idiot.

[msmerymac]

Her job as a parent isn't exactly to protect her child from seeing and knowing graphic things. It's to help determine when they are of a proper age to deal with them so that by the time they are 18, they are, hopefully, a fully grown person, marginally capable of living a normal life and making intelligent decisions on their own.

I mean, in most places the driving age is 16, but that doesn't mean you hand a kid on a license on their 16th birthday without ever having exposed them to driving.

The school obviously thinks this is grade level appropriate. I'm inclined to agree.

[aurora]

Sept 12, 2015 7:19:40 GMT -5 @wandering said:

...I guess this lady is also against self breast exams?! Idiot.

Well, she's an adult, so she knows they can be non sexual, but one couldn't possibly expect a 15 YO to be able to distinguish between medical and sexual, duh.

/sarcasm

[mominatrix]

Sept 11, 2015 11:09:46 GMT -5 josieposy said:

Every time I see another story about this book it reminds me to read it. I have a copy on my shelf even!

Me too.

MIL sent us a copy, because H's (paternal) grandfather plays a role in it (he was an OBGYN), and I still haven't read it. Because I suck at life.

[busybodyk]

So she would probably be against a sex education class too I guess. This makes no sense.