Herman Melton. Southside Virginia, 1750-1950: Echoing Through History. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2006.

From Mitchells Publications.

Reading Herman Melton's latest book about Southside Virginia is almost like spending an afternoon with someone who experienced the events firsthand. You get a good overview of episodes in our history, but without the heavy, intricate details that often (but not always) weigh down those stories. These clips are valuable because Melton expounds upon occurrences that may be little known to most people.

Kelly Cherry. Girl in a Library: On Women Writers and the Writing Life. Kansas City, MO: BkMk Press, 2009.

photo from Barnes & Noble

Kelly Cherry, a resident of Halifax County, was recently named Virginia’s poet laureate, so when I picked up her 2009 publication, Girl in a Library, I expected a book of poetry. I am embarrassed to say that I usually run away from the genre, so I was a bit apprehensive to review the book for this blog. Fortunately, I looked closer to read the subtitle – On Women Writers & the Writing Life – and realized that I was wrong.

Rather than being a work of complex poems, Cherry’s Girl in a Library is part memoir, part exploration of life, self, history, gender, art, philosophy – anything, really.

We learn about her (gangster) childhood in an apartment above a grocery store in Ithaca, New York, and her parents’ initial reaction to her desire to become a writer, her unusual first year of college at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and how a dean (at a different college) made it possible for her to return to higher education, and her decision to write books of poetry after her first novel. She discusses how much she enjoys teaching. Cherry also shares with her readers details of her failed first marriage but also of her happy union today.

At the same time, Cherry writes about fellow writers and their use of characters, time, and settings. She explores the field of literature and what it means to be a female in that world. She questions what it means to be a Southern writer. Truth be told, there were some essays that delved into concepts too complex for me, but it was still a very worthwhile read.

Of particular interest to readers of this blog is her description of her time in Virginia, especially Southside. Cherry spent her adolescence in Chesterfield County and was a student at both the University of Mary Washington and the University of Virginia before beginning her professional career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1970s. While she has spent much of her life in the South, in the essay “The Globe and the Brain: On Place in Fiction,” Cherry describes her own struggle with writing “southern stories,” calling on Eudora Welty and William Faulkner for inspiration. It truly is a fascinating study in the significance and mystery of Place.

In her retirement, Cherry and her husband bought a small farm in Halifax, which she calls a “pleasure.” Her 2007 book of poetry, Hazard and Prospect, highlights her time in Virginia and points to the influence that her Halifax homestead and the Southside landscape has had on her.

Find Girl in a Library in the Charlotte County Library catalog.

Have you read Girl in a Library? Please share your opinion about the book and this summary.

Rebecca Skloot. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown, 2010.

photo from The Baltimore Sun

Rebecca Skloot's book is centered around the simple act of a Johns Hopkins doctor taking tissue samples from a sick woman in 1951, but this fascinating story goes much deeper than describing what happened in a lab sixty years ago. Henrietta Lacks, whose cervical cancer cells were taken without her knowledge or consent, was a poor, young mother of five whose body was riddled with cancer. In the decades since her death, her children tried to come to terms to life without their mother. At the same time, scientists and doctors benefited, sometimes financially, from the information that they received from her DNA and cell line, known as HeLa. What made her HeLa cells unique was that they were immortal, which means that they multiplied rather than died like most cells. Because of this, scientific research could be performed that saved many patients' lives. Still, was doing so without any recognition or compensation fair to Henrietta and her family? As Skloot investigated this qyestion, she realized how important it was to tell the story of Lacks and her children. This work - part non-fiction, part memoir - delves into such issues of history, race, poverty, class, and medical ethics.


Find The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in the Charlotte County Library catalog.


Have you read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks? Please share your opinion about the book and this summary.