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One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Her Country's Children
by Melissa Fay Greene
Book Reviewed by:More than 13 million children have been orphaned by AIDS
in Africa; UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS) predicts that
by 2010 25-50 million African children under the age of 15 will be orphaned; in
a dozen African countries, up to a quarter of the nation's children will be
orphans.
When Melissa Fay Green started to research There Is No Me Without You she
was driven by a simple question: Who will raise the millions of children
currently orphaned, let alone the generations to come? Who will pack them
school lunches? Who will comfort them when they have nightmares? Who
will help millions of children avoid lines of servitude and prostitution?
Who will pass on to them the traditions of their culture and religion, of
history and government, of craft and profession? Who will help them to
grow up to make the right choices for their own lives?
The answer is not many - but there are some, In There is No Me Without You:
One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children, Greene puts a human face on
this overwhelming tragedy by focusing on one imperfect woman, Haregwoin Teferra,
who in the face of her own tragedy (the loss of her husband and daughter) found
the strength to take in orphans, both HIV-positive and negative (at a time when
most Ethiopians were terrified to be close to those with HIV/AIDS, believing
that they would become infected) and since then has given hope and a home to
dozens, if not hundreds of children. By centering her book on Haregwoin,
Greene illuminates the history, science and social effects of the African AIDS
crisis, but in a way that is not only manageable for us to take in, but
deeply inspiring.
Melissa Fay Greene is the author of Praying for
Sheetrock, The Temple Bombing, and Last Man Out. She is a
two-time finalist for the National Book Award, and Praying for Sheetrock,
which the Boston Globe described it as "a monumental social history with
implications that go far beyond the borders of a tiny coastal Georgia county",
was named one of the top 100 works of journalism in the 20th century. She has
written for the New Yorker, Life, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Redbook,
Salon.com, the Chicago Tribune, and many others. She lives in
Atlanta with her husband, Don Samuel, and their seven children, two of whom were
adopted from Ethiopia; they are in the process of adopting two more.
Suggested Links:
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in September 2006, and has been updated for the
September 2007 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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Censorship, like charity, should begin at home: but unlike charity, it should end there.
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