Non-Fictional Prose

As I  continue to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, I'm amazed at how Skloot seems to come at this story from every possible angle (historical, medical, cultural) and from the perspective of her own journey, Henrietta's and Henrietta's family's. I think that simply the author's fascination with Henrietta and her cells is an interesting story on its own...as is her journey to speak with Henrietta's family members...and even just the cells' medical narrative would make really interesting reading as well. Skloot even portrays Henrietta as a kind of heroine, adding another dimension to the book. I think that this book is an ideal combination of different types of literature.

Seeing as I was not sure what genre or sub-genre The Immortal Life of Henrietta fell under. I found that it is considered to be investigative journalism.

While reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" I wondered if the book was a biography, a work of science journalism, or a historical work investigating structural and overt racism within the medical community. The relationship between Henrietta Lacks, the woman, and the HeLa cells, which were once part of Henrietta Lacks, serves as the emotional and scientific center of the book. The story starts with details about Henrietta Lacks, the woman. Skloot makes an explicit point to write about features of Henrietta's persona that simultaneously mark her as a relatable human subject, a woman we might know, and a specifically racialized, gendered subject in a midcentury Baltimore.

"All writing is experimental . . . It is an attempt to solve a problem, to find a meaning, to discover its own way toward a meaning." - Donald M. Murray

In "Teach Writing as Process, Not Product," Donald Murray stresses that the ideas in a paper are just as important as execution, and that academia too often limits how an idea might be executed in prose. Having written two papers thus far for this class (and with two more to go), I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how well our class has embraced what Murray calls "experimental" in our webpapers.

-culture is constructed, other cultures seem “WIERD” to us

-children learn by active teaching = “WIERD” ; parents take active role

-teaching keeps you focused on one goal, doesn’t help w/ brain growth

-every book suggests that another book might give us a fuller picture (kgould’s post on the graphic novel Palestine)

-ckosarek: Ofed Grosbar’s “The Drama of the Suicide Terrorist”

western view: internal, personal, we would never die for a collectivist society, “private act”

eastern: collectivist, feel tied to culture

-Americans don’t have a unified culture to protect

-May not be the view from all of the western countries

-individual interviews, anecdotal

 Oxford Dictionary defines non-fiction as "prose writing that is based on facts, real events and real people." After I finished reading The Path to Paradise: The Inner World of Suicide Bombers and Their Dispatchers by Anat Berko, I thought about the extend to which this book is a form of non-fictional writing. Berko does interview Palestinian suicide bombers in prisons. She meets with real people and presents to the reader what the suicide bombers said and felt on their way to committing these suicides bombings. She does overgeneralize and make assumptions on some of the things that she thinks. The book is a reflection and a personal narrative of what Berko captured from the testimonies of the suicide bombers.

I think that something that Berko does well is shed another light on the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict. She doesn’t provide many solutions (with the exception of the short paragraph at the end of the conclusion) but she does portray the story from an angle that is unusual for many westerners. I think that we get so stuck in our own opinions and beliefs about this issue that we forget that the opposition also has relevant things to say and ideas which we do not hear on a regular basis.

 I found The Path to Paradise to be one of the best books that I have read in a long time. The language used and the writing style made for a read easy on the eyes, although the complexity of the ideas, history, and emotion forced me to take my time with each paragraph. I loved the conversational style mixed in with Berko's own experiences and interpretations, and the combination of the historical and cultural details along with the personal depth that Berko gained in her interviews compelled me to keep reading. Reading The Path to Paradise, I thought that Berko essentially spelled out who she is to us: she is a Jew from Israel who spent hundreds and hundreds of hours interviewing suicide bombers and their dispatchers.