Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
In its heyday under Henrietta's care, the Lacks home-house is the kind of place you want to be: food cooking on the stove, mom there to take care of the kids, a sense of shared history and memory. It truly represents the center of family life for the Lacks family, binding them to each other and to the past:
[the] log cabin […] once served as slave quarters, with plank floors, gas lanterns, and water Henrietta hauled up a long hill from the creek...The air inside stayed so cool that when relatives died, the family kept their corpses in the front hallway for days so people could visit and pay respects. Then they buried them in the cemetery out back. (18-19)
But the home-house also represents something less warm and fuzzy. There are associations with slavery—it's a former slave quarters. It's also not a grand building: the fragile structure reflects the poverty of the Lacks family and their struggle to survive.
We also know that Henrietta and Day started having children when she was 14 because they were left to their own devices in a shared room in the home-house, and that it becomes the scene of horrific abuse after Henrietta's death.
Ultimately, the home-house has mixed significance in this work and probably in the hearts of the Lacks family. As with most family homes, it represents the best of times and the worst of times.