Open Book Initiative

Open Book is a campus-wide, common-reading initiative for First-Year students which begins at Orientation and progresses through the academic year. From fall to spring, a number of activities complement the open book project including small-group book discussions, films and speakers. Peer Mentors and a number of E-town faculty and staff members read the book along with the first-year students and will lead the discussion groups.

2011 Selection:
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks 

A letter to campus from the co-chairs of the initiative--Tom Hagan, assistant dean for the First-Year Program and Beth Ann Zambella, director of the High Library--describes the reading choice:

We have chosen Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks . Tom Nissley, editor of Amazon.com's book blog Omnivoracious, says, “From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951.

A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories?”

According to our committee members, Skloot’s book is easy to engage with, and offers opportunities for compelling discussions across a broad range of disciplines, including science and technology, health care, ethics, history, law and public policy, religious studies, journalism and professional writing, psychology, sociology, communications, social work, and race, gender and social justice studies.

We look forward to engaging with all of you in the coming year. Keep an eye on your email box for breaking news about speakers, films, and open book discussion groups. We will be working to make the themes of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks relevant across the school year, from Orientation through Scholarship and Creative Arts Day.