Book Review: There is No Me Without You
Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 10:06:36 AM PDT
In the late 1980s and early 1990s in the US, my best friend got sick. I didn't know it, though, until he told me, finally, around 1988, on a late Spring evening, in a restaurant on Capitol Hill, not far from those politicians who dared not speak the word that my friend brought up that night: He had AIDS.
I had no idea of the secrecy my friend had gone through -- at work, with his family, with his friends. The deaths - of lovers and friends - he couldn't talk about. With the secret out, we talked. And I began to notice that his other friends, men mostly, seemed to disappear. At each social event, some of them were thinner and thinner -- until we didn't see them anymore. Other friends, who weren't sick, also disappeared. They didn't want to be near the sick. My friend called AIDS "the plague". People were afraid to shake his hand, hug him. At that time, AIDS was a death sentence. It was only when and how, not if. No AIDS cocktails, no remission. It was the gay disease.
And then, after many years, the hard work of the gay community and others paid off. New drugs came out, people started living longer. Fewer people got infected; fewer children too. AIDS disappeared from the headlines. But, as There is No Me Without You proves it shouldn’t have. AIDS didn't go away.
When I saw There is No Me Without You, I was torn. I recognized the author, Melissa Fay Greene, from her articles about adoption and large families. Still, I walked right past this book. Twice. Yup. AIDS on the front cover? - I didn't need to read more about despair and death. I didn't want to be depressed. I didn't want to remember.
I went back, though, and checked it out of the library and prepared myself for a tough read. If I didn't like it, I told myself, I didn't have to finish it.
I couldn't put it down. There is No Me Without You is a page turner. What? Yes. AIDS, epidemiology, public health, sociological impact of epidemics, child welfare, developing economies - These are dry topics with dramatic numbers. Tens of millions of orphans as the result of the AIDS crisis in Africa. Millions of people dying yearly of AIDS. The numbers are compelling but not personal. Melissa Fay Greene's book There is No Me Without You takes them all on, one person at a time. There is No Me Without You is also the story about people caught in the intersection of all those dry topics - especially the children. The stories Greene tells are personal. Specific. Detailed.
Without focus, however, the stories could run together, even overwhelm the reader. The focus, the center of There is No Me Without You, is Haregewoin Teferra. Haregewoin Teferra is not a celebrity, she's not employed by a large non-governmental agency like the UN, she's not a prominent political figure or even a member of an influential family in Ethiopia. She is like you, like me. A middle-class person with two daughters and a husband. And, her life is changed when one of her daughters becomes sick from and dies from AIDS. Haregewoin starts from the place that so many of us start from: ignorance and fear and self pity and moves someplace else. Her grief, her immense loss, becomes the foundation for a new life, dedicated not just to her biological family but to the children who come to her -- orphans of the AIDS crisis. She becomes their shelter from abandonment, homelessness, a way-station to a new family, whether with her in Ethiopia or with new families in Malta, Spain, Italy, England, Australia, Sweden, and the US.
As she writes about Teferra, Greene weaves the politics of AIDS, the history of Ethiopia and of AIDS in Africa into the fabric of Haregewoin Teferra's evolution from widow to foster mother so that the reader gets the right information - whether it's about the impact of Haile Selassie on modern Ethipoia or the mutation of AIDS as it spreads through re-usable vaccines designed to help protect Africans all over the continent from disease.
By itself, Haregewoin's story, along with the other stories of the children who come to her house, live with her and find new families, would be an upbeat, feel good story. But Greene has the guts and skill to show us that Haregewoin (and the children) is human, like the rest of us, and her path is not a straight line, nor is it perfect. As her foster home grows as she takes in more children, she runs into all sorts of problems. There are scandals and missteps as the foster home evolves, as Haregewoin Teferra realizes what her work means to the children, their families (adoptive and biological), to Ethiopia -- and to herself.
I have to tell you, as I made my way in and out of the lives of, the children she cares for - Nardos, Mekdes, Ababu, Amelezewd - those who find new families and those who succumb to AIDS themselves, I cried. Unlike orphans in other countries, other children placed for adoption, many if not most of these children lived in families, loving even educated families until they were destroyed by AIDS. I cried for joy and sadness. Greene takes us on the journey that some orphans are lucky to take - maybe one percent of all AIDS orphans - from the foster home to new homes abroad. We get a glimpse into their old and new lives and the pain and joy in both. Greene's family includes 2 (soon to be 4) children adopted from Ethiopia and she isn't afraid to show the grief that Ethipian-born adoptees go through, including her own daughter Helen. She's clear though that international adoption isn't the cure; affordable drug therapies will prevent more orphans, keep more families intact. But when I finished, I had hope, some hope: for the resilience of the human spirit, of children and for the tenacity of those who work in the field -- the front lines of AIDS, child welfare. I came out with a new respect for them all.
Next up: Interview with Melissa Fay Greene, author of There is No Me Without You
