Author: Megan Giddings

Lakewood sends a young Black woman into a research facility in rural Michigan that pays extremely well and requires her to sign away any right to ask what is being tested on her, and the money is what keeps her mother alive. Giddings is writing about the Tuskegee syphilis study and about the cells taken from Henrietta Lacks without pretending either belongs safely to the past. The horror is administrative: forms, confidentiality agreements, a supervisor who is unfailingly reasonable. The Women Could Fly followed, set in an America where unmarried women over thirty must register and be monitored.