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Sarah Rubin

Dr. Lee

GWSS 490

24 January, 2015

Intersectionality in the Story of Elsie Lacks

In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” by Rebecca Skloot, the story of

Elsie Lacks serves as little more than a thread in the tapestry of her mother’s life.

However, I believe the story of Elsie Lacks provides just as powerful an analysis of

intersectionality and multiple layers of oppression as that of Henrietta. Indeed, by

examining Elsie’s life we must consider an additional facet of institutionalized

oppression: the impact of mental illness, disability and “deviance” against the

backdrop of the medicalization of physical and mental health.

Elsie Lacks, the eldest daughter of Henrietta Lacks, was institutionalized at a

young age due to epilepsy, diagnosed with “idiocy,” and died at age 15 (Skloot, 329).

Her tragic story is evidence of the discrimination that ran rampant in such

institutions as Crownsville State Hospital, where Elsie lived out the end of her life.

One cannot fully examine Elsie’s story without an intersectional approach, taking

into account the oppression she would have faced due to her race, class, gender, and

mental/physical ability. All these aspects of her identity came together and

interacted in such a way that this young girl was confronted with the full force of

society’s systematic inequalities. Her abominable treatment, undergirded by

society’s view that she was less than human, is a clear example of the dangers of

such ignorance and discrimination.

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For Elsie Lacks, few (if any) adjustments were made by those around her to

accommodate for her physical and mental difficulties. As her sister Deborah pointed

out, if Elsie was deaf and no one had bothered to teach her sign language, then it was

no wonder that she was unable to communicate (Skloot, 271). This failure to meet

Elsie at the level she was at indicates both ignorance and ableist predispositions on

the part of those involved in Elsie’s life. Although Henrietta did her best to try and

heal her daughter by bringing her to numerous revival meetings, the challenges of

caring for her ultimately proved to be too much, and doctors convinced Henrietta to

send her to Crownsville State Hospital (Skloot, 45). This separation was dreadful for

both Elsie and her mother, but it seemed to be the only possible course of action.

Within the setting of Crownsville State Hospital, there are many issues to

examine. The authority of the so-called “caretakers” (to use such a term sincerely in

this case would be to disregard the definition of “care”) over the vulnerable patient

population causes the hospital to function as a sort of goldfish bowl, magnifying the

discrimination present in society at large. With such complete control, these

authoritative figures were free to use residents for dangerous and painful

experiments without their consent (de Vise).

Possibly the most sickening realization regarding these atrocities is that the

analysis of these issues cannot be confined to a historical lens – abuse of psychiatric

patients is still very prevalent today. Issues such as excessive use of seclusion and

restraints on psychiatric patients and exploitation of vulnerable individuals are

problems that various organizations, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness

(NAMI), are still working to combat. Even though legally mandated segregation in
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U.S. state hospitals and psychiatric institutions may be a thing of the past, racial

discrimination still plays a part in the systematic inequalities present in such spaces.

As Ana Durazo asserts, “[t]he institution of medicine is organized and structured to

reflect and reproduce society’s class, racial, and gendered hierarchies, and as it

mirrors and purports injustice, it also produces ideology that legitimates it” (Durazo,

181). Thus, the human mental and physical condition becomes increasingly

medicalized, such divisions come into sharper relief than ever before. In this way, we

see the systematic, institutionalized discrimination against both Elsie Lacks and her

mother, Henrietta.

While Elsie was abused in Crownsville State Hospital, Henrietta was also

subjected to less than ideal treatment during her time at Johns Hopkins hospital.

Like her daughter, Henrietta (via cells removed from her cervix) was used studies by

researchers who did not obtain her informed consent. The lack of autonomy granted

to both Elsie and Henrietta reflects the multiple layers of discrimination they faced:

being poor women of color, they were treated as less than human. For Elsie, there

was the added disadvantage of being deemed “deviant” due to her nonconforming

mental state and consequent behavior. By diagnosing Elsie with “idiocy” and

committing her to Crownsville, the doctors effectively removed any chance of her

assimilation into society and negated the possibility that some simple adjustments,

such as teaching her sign language or some other alternative method of

communication, could have eased her condition. As Durazo states, “[…]the medical

gaze transposes a disease model that sets out to deflect attention away from social

injustices, while highlighting individual pathology” (Durazo 181). Thus, the doctors
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at Crownsville placed Elsie Lacks into a predetermined category (the diagnosis of

“idiocy”), regardless of how she fit in said category, and used the diagnosis to both

justify any treatment she received and remove attention from other aspects of her

persona that didn’t fit their mold.

In conclusion, the story of Elsie Lacks provides an important perspective on

the issues of intersectionality and oppression, and draws more parallels with the

story of her mother than might be apparent at first glance. While Skloot chose to

focus her book on the life of Henrietta Lacks, it is my belief that her eldest daughter

experienced an equal, if not more highly concentrated, share of the oppression and

discrimination brought on by the intersection of race, class, gender, and mental

capacity. During her time in Crownsville State Hospital, Elsie was a victim of

nonconsensual medical research like her mother, was housed in an abominable

facility, and treated as less than human. It would not do well for her story to be

forgotten.
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Works Cited

de Vise, Daniel. "Studying a Relic of a Painful Past." The Washington Post 12 Aug.

2005. Web. 23 Jan. 2015.

Durazo, Ana Clarissa Rojas. "Medical Violence Against People of Color and the

Medicalization of Domestic Violence." Color of Violence: The INCITE!

Anthology. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006. Web. 18 Jan. 2015.

Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Random House, Inc.,

2010. Print.