We Shall Know Her Name by Sibihan Lawrence, Listener Poet

Origin Story

Conversation with Kimako Desvignes DNP, RN, Associate Director of Oncology with almost 30 years of experience in medicine, was an emotional journey through a history of social injustice and racial discrimination—a reflection on ancestry at times through shared tears. Henrietta Lacks’ story had a powerful impact on us both.

Dr. Desvignes said, “The historic traumas of African-American women—all African-Americans—lead us to not be the first people at the doctors, nor the first to get surgery. My legacy as a nurse leader is based in integrity, ensuring I provide the best care for everyone. No matter who you are or where you are, I’ll advocate for you, I’ll speak up and fight for you.” She went on: “Henrietta Lacks’ cells have provided opportunities for the world, gene therapy, AIDS, HIV and more, they’re still standing on her shoulders. Her family deserves everything, they should lack nothing.”

Sibihan Lawrence, Listener Poet
Say Her Name: Honoring Henrietta Lacks' Legacy and Impact on Medicine and Research Ethics
Featured at Listening Together: Poems from a Year of Conversations 2025

We Shall Know Her Name

By Sibihan Lawrence, Listener Poet

And We Shall Know Her Name
The Unsung Cornerstone of a Scientific Revolution
Her Sublime Bloodline
The Baseline of
Innovation and Invention
Extracted from unconsenting flesh
Every stolen HeLa cell
An Anchor for Modern Medicine
We Shall Know Her Name
Unassuming Oracle
Responsible
For the development of Universal vaccine
From Polio to Covid-19
In vitro fertilization
AIDS, HIV
And everything in between
And We Shall Know Her Name
It will reverberate in corridors of power
Straining through the closed lips
of the complicit
We Shall Know Her Name
Her proliferating DNA
Like a rapturous river flows
Immortalized in a nation’s veins
Memorialized in our bones
In Resistance, Recognition and Reclamation
We Shall Know Her Name
Henrietta Lacks
We Shall Know Her Name

Skewed Systems failed you
Policies, Practice, Legislation
Callous Companies
And Cunning Corporations
But what is understood
Doesn’t need to be explained
So instead
We self-diagnose
And we self-help
And we become the Physicians
And we heal ourselves
And we hold our breath and pray
as we walk into Doctors’ rooms
We opt out of surgeries and hospital visits
We Beware those men in white coats
Those who practice malpractice
Those who Bear witness
To sick trysts
On sick bodies
Without fear of reprimand or reprisal
Those who weaponize patronage
And toy with our survival
Beware those that tease you with
their expertise
And then kill you with
(un)kindness
Those that attempt to colonize cell culture
Picking over sacrificial Black skins
Gathering around sterile tables
Like hungry vultures
We Shall Know Her Name

Henrietta Lacks
We Shall Know Her Name
Black Woman
She marched through the Battlefields
Desperate for your aid
Tip-toeing around segregation
Dancing with discrimination
Desperate for more time
Desperate for your grace
Yet she became your experiment --
Food for the thoughtless
Your unaware Guinea Pig
Stranger in her house
Scraping at her tissues
Prodding at cell walls
Subjecting her sinew
Manipulating her Melanin
Objectifying her Womb
Then marketing her Membranes
And touting them to the highest bidder
This is all too familiar...
So we swallow our feelings
We push them down
And we fold our tongues
Because even though we scream on those hospital tables
No one comes
And our thick-skinned Black pain
Is like a silent movie
And our tears dry slowly
And the Trauma is unholy...

They say that time heals all wounds
But they never talk about the scars
-- the suddenness of severed kin
Five motherless children
But yet we know why The Caged Bird still sings
It is said that
Those who exalt themselves
Will be humbled
And those who humble themselves
Will be exalted
So Justice must prevail
And We Shall Know Your Name
And know your Legacy
Black Woman
Descendant of
Ancient Code-crackers
And Skillful Code-switchers
Resilient Water waders
And Ingenious Miracle Workers
Henrietta Lacks
You
Single-handedly reshaped Science
And changed
The course of history
Your Celestial silhouette looms
In Resistance, Recognition and Reclamation
We Shall
Henrietta Lacks
Yes! We Shall!

More Poems & Stories

Housewarming

Interspersed with the joys and worries of being a gramma, she recounted her own grandparents – challenges and opportunities of caring for them, grief of losing them, gratitude for being loved by them, and the everyday experiences of now living in their home.

Language of Diagnosis

What is pain without a diagnosis? This is what occupied this patient before she even received her breast cancer diagnosis about a year ago.

Gratitude

She told me that she picked her battles more and was trying to be less of a people pleaser.

Growth Phase

He ended up talking about his son, who is now his daughter. Another part of his experience of continual growth and soul-opening.

Dinner

Her values and perspective on life had changed as she considered ways to spend more time with her husband.

American Sonnet for Father Day and the Wisdom Tree

“When I see an old dude who’s optimistic, living his life, I always stop to talk to him to try to find out what he has done.”

enough

This nurse was considering leaving a position where she spent many years due to issues she experienced and witnessed at her hospital.

Variant

Many of the people he worked with had to develop a new identity in the context of their caregiving responsibilities. “It’s as if they need to become a new variant of themselves.”

In the River You May Find Yourself

“We’re taught to enter a room with a specific goal... with assumptions... with a hypothesis about what may be going on with the patient.”

The Shift

She believes that most of those who have connected with ACS began with a personal connection, but then, according to her, “you evolve, and you shift.”

Walk With Me

With her background in counseling and psychology, she works to bring people together and support patients.

Legacy of Hope

Although at times she becomes discouraged about the inequalities in the world, she is determined to do her part by making sure everyone has access to quality healthcare.

Living in the Magic

This person radiated gratitude and hope. She shared that she discovered she was expecting a son just before receiving a lung cancer diagnosis at the age of 31.

The House Medicine Built

She had an epiphany as a child — that love could heal the world. Now, as a seasoned physician, there’s still a part of her that believes in the power of love, but not with the same idealism she once held.

Why Neurologists Write

He talked about recently speaking with a patient who experiences migraines: she is seeking the truth, he is seeking the truth to find a way to work with her, wanting to give more than a diagnosis and prognosis.

I Am Stuck on a Wheel That Keeps Turning

To her, the surgical world has felt like “a wheel that keeps spinning,” a seemingly endless pursuit towards an undefinable goal.

List

While she kept an open mind throughout medical school, the field of OB/GYN ticked off all the boxes for her.

No Words Exist (Why They’re Afraid of Us)

“I was at a birth recently and thought: This is why they are so afraid of us. They can’t control this” She sat on her couch with a mug of coffee. She is a queer, femme, mother of two who has worked in reproductive health for over two decades.

Where Do the Children Play?

“I always took strength from the way little kids would handle it.”

We Shall Know Her Name

“The historic traumas of African-American women — all African-Americans — lead us to not be the first people at the doctors, nor the first to get surgery.”

One Human Body

“Sometimes I feel so helpless,” said this resident, reflecting on all of the challenges faced by the young patients and their families whom she served. Over the last several days, she has become increasingly overwhelmed by events in the news and has questioned her ability to make a difference in the world.

Stories with My Father

“It’s hard to watch the decline and sometimes hard to visit but it weighs on me not to,” she said. Her father had always been an elaborate storyteller and an alive, vibrant man with a big voice.

We Matter, Guys

The Good Listening Project was honored to once again take part in the annual KNN conference in Minneapolis this year. Jenny closed the session by writing this harvest poem that captured the voices and sentiments shared.

In The Middle Way

After a history of crippling endometriosis, this woman had an arduous, ongoing struggle with her healthcare community for the right to have a hysterectomy. She was finally granted approval at the age of 29. “It had been like pulling teeth, but finally I felt free,” she told me.

'O ka mele

Her childhood was infused with Hawaiian-Polynesian music and dance, taught to her father by his mother. Today, her life’s work is to connect the unbelievable discoveries of molecularly focused pre-clinical research directly to the patient experience of treatment.

On the darkest days

She is a single mother born to a single mother and had to grow up fast. She is juggling a sticky work situation, her own anxiety and depression, and being away from home and her kids.

This Healing Place

I was invited to create a group poem for forty participants at the Arts in Healing luncheon, hosted by the Inova Health Foundation in partnership with the board.

What You Will Call Me

What does it mean for people living with Sickle Cell Disease to be seen, heard, and understood? For this person, it meant finding – and using – her voice to advocate for herself and for others.