Lab Girl

Abstract

This memoir stands at the intersection between autobiography, narrative and scientific writing. In each section of Lab Girl, Dr. Hope Jahren describes her relationship with science and nature, articulating it with anecdotes about her childhood, marriage and trips, as well as explaining the evolution of her career as a PhD student and researcher, and the struggles she faced while establishing and working on several laboratories (including worries about financing, conducting experiments, paying the personnel, etc.). Besides including this information, each section of the memoir contains a chapter that describes a particular element of Jahren’s research and an aspect of a plant’s biology that she presents as a metaphor for (something in) her life.