Communication isn’t always clear, often times people make assumptions due to their miscommunication. These assumptions can lead to people believing in having wrong intentions. Since people communicate in a variety of ways on a day to day basis, miscommunication is a natural thing to occur. Common ways of misunderstanding can vary from eye contact, actions, tone, language to the dialect but in my case, it was lack of information. After a day in school, I told my mom to pick me up at 5 but what I didn’t tell her was where to pick me up. So my mom assumed that I meant picking me up at school but I had class somewhere else and at 5 neither of us could find each other because we were in different locations. Leaving out crucial information was my miscommunication which leads to my mom’s misunderstanding.

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In the book “The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks”, Hsu is Victor McKusick’s assistant and because he comes from China, english isn’t his native language. Day tries to communicate with her but because of the language barrier, Day couldn’t understand her. The lacks family couldn’t understand Hsu’s intentions until the blood draws.

“When Hsu got home from the conference, she called Day to ask if she could draw blood from his family. ‘They said they got my wife and she part alive,’ he told me years later. ‘They said they been doing experiments on her and they wanted to come test my children see if they got that cancer killed their mother.'” (Skloot,182)

The Lacks family got confused with how Henrietta’s cells are immortal and Henrietta isn’t. When Bobbette ran home yelling at Lawrence “Part of your mother, it’s alive!” Day misunderstood that Bobbette was referring to Henrietta’s cells and not Henrietta.

“Bobbette excused herself and ran home, bursting through the screen door into the kitchen, yelling for Lawrence, ‘Part of your mother, it’s alive!’ Lawrence called his father to tell him what Bobbette had heard, and Day didn’t know what to think. “Henrietta’s alive?!” he thought. It didn’t make any sense.” (Skloot,181)

The Lacks family suffered poverty and lack of education, so this became a disadvantage to their communication. The Lacks has grown to believe in religion instead of science. After Gary explained to Sklott their religious belief and how to make sense of Henrietta’s immortal cells.

“ At that moment, reading those passages, I understood completely how some of the Lackses could believe, without doubt, that Henrietta had been chosen by the Lord to become an immortal being. If you believe the Bible is the literal truth, the immortality of Henrietta’s cells makes perfect sense.” (Skloot,296)

In the Movie “Sierra Burgess Is A Loser“, Jamey asks Veronica for her number, but Veronica gives him Sierra’s number instead and because of this miscommunication, Sierra is misunderstood with her true identity. During this time Jamey is talking to Sierra, he thinks he is talking to Veronica since Veronica gave Jamey Sierra’s number instead of hers.

Work Cited
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Broadway Books, 2010.