Clover and Lacks Town, where Henrietta Lacks grew up, represent a bygone era for Rebecca Skloot. She sees both the idyllic, pre-industrial side, as well as the deep racial divides that lie underneath its surface. Rebecca also notes the extreme poverty in which its residents—especially African Americans—live. At the same time Deborah Lacks thinks of Clover as her favorite place on earth, because she associates it with her mother (and indeed, Clover is where Henrietta is buried in an unmarked grave). At the end of the book, Rebecca returns to Clover to find that it has disappeared entirely, a victim of an economic downturn and of racist and classist financial policies. Once learning that Deborah has died, Rebecca remembers that Deborah hoped that Heaven would look like Clover, and that she would see her mother and sister there. Thus in the end, despite its flaws, Clover becomes a symbol of the life that Deborah never got to have with her mother and her sister.
Clover and Lacks Town Quotes in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks quotes below all refer to the symbol of Clover and Lacks Town. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 16
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The white Lackses know their kin all buried in here with ours cause they family. They know it, but they’ll never admit it. They just say, “Them Black Lackses, they ain’t kin!”
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Chapter 35
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Take one of me and my sister by her and my mother grave…It’ll be the only picture in the world with the three of us almost together.
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Chapter 38
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Heaven looks just like Clover, Virginia. My mother and I always loved it down there more than anywhere else in the world.
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Clover and Lacks Town Symbol Timeline in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The timeline below shows where the symbol Clover and Lacks Town appears in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: Clover
...later. Afterwards her father, Johnny Pleasant, took his children back to the family home of Clover, Virginia. The relatives divided the children up, and Henrietta was given to Tommy Lacks, her...
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Clover has a Main Street where, on nice days, the white members of the town would...
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...horses along the dirt road that runs through the former Lacks tobacco plantation (now called Lacks Town ). They have a cousin named Crazy Joe Grinnan who is desperately in love with...
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...most likely brought on by syphilis contracted and passed on by Day. The family at Lacks Town , however, originally just calls her “simple” or “touched.”
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Fred has returned to Clover to try to convince Henrietta and Day to come back to Turner Station with him....
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Chapter 5: Blackness Be Spreadin All Inside
...are growing in a lab. She has returned home, taking her children on trips to Clover and keeping house. While radiation treatments usually have terrible symptoms, no one remembers Henrietta feeling...
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...Henrietta’soldest daughter, the mentally impaired Elsie. Before her illness, Henrietta would frequently take Elsie to Clover. As she grew older, however, Elsie began to have accidents. When Henrietta became pregnant with...
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Chapter 9: Turner Station
...narration and footage of a young black actress dancing. Soon after there is footage of Clover, Henrietta’s childhood home. It ends with an interview with Fred Garret standing near the family...
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...asks him to put her in touch with the Lacks family members still living in Clover, but he refuses.
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Chapter 10: The Other Side of the Tracks
Rebecca describes Clover a community in Southern Virginia, which she visits on a warm day in December. By...
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The divide between Clover and Lacks Town is clear: on one side of the road there are well-kept farms,...
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...explains that he can’t read, and asks Rebecca if the piece mentions Henrietta’s childhood in Clover.
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Chapter 11: “The Devil of Pain Itself”
...sister to care for her children. After she falls asleep, Gladys goes back home to Clover. She then calls Day to tell him that Henrietta is going to die, and to...
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Chapter 12: The Storm
Days later, a train takes Henrietta from Baltimore to Clover in a cheap coffin. The Clover undertaker drives Henrietta’s coffin into Lacks Town. Cootie prays...
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Chapter 15: “Too Young to Remember”
The narrative jumps back to the 1950s. After Henrietta’s funeral, cousins from Clover and Turner Station help to care for her family. While Day works two jobs, Lawrence...
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...at dawn and forcing them to do chores. In the summers, she sends them to Clover to pick worms off tobacco leaves. If they ever stop, Ethel beats them. She focuses...
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Chapter 16: “Spending Eternity in the Same Place”
...original plantation to Benjamin Lacks, and the other half to the black Lackses—this land became Lacks Town . Sixteen years later, when Benjamin died, he split his land between his sisters, and...
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Rebecca recounts how omnipresent race still is in Clover. While all insist that race relations have never been bad there, only twelve miles away...
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...the eighties, Lillian expresses paranoia about why people know about her family, her life in Clover, and Henrietta. Gladys explains that because of her light skin, Lillian “converted to Puerto Rican.”
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Chapter 19: “The Most Critical Time on Earth is Now”
...Joe finds Ivy and fatally stabs him in the heart. The family hides Joe in Clover, where he fights with so many of his cousins that they send him to DC....
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Chapter 33: The Hospital for the Negro Insane
...Elsie. After visiting Christoph’slab, the two women travel to Crownsville. They plan to stop at Clover and Roanoke on the way back.
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...to learn that the archives have no record of Elsie. They then move on to Clover, where an excited Deborah repeatedly shows passersby her new picture of Elsie. She grows increasingly...
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Chapter 35: Soul Cleansing
...progresses, Deborah grows covered with hives, and Rebecca becomes concerned. The two finally get to Clover, where Deborah asks Rebecca to take a photo of her with the two pictures of...
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Chapter 38: The Long Road to Clover
In January 2009, Rebecca pulls into the town of Clover to realize that all of Clover is gone—the businesses have all closed. She fills her...
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When Rebecca finds the remains of Clover, she has not spoken to Deborah for several months. The book is done, but Deborah...
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...Henrietta. After watching the interview herself, Deborah had told Rebecca that, “Heaven looks just like Clover, Virginia. My mother and I always loved it down there more than anywhere else in...
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