Our Kind of People
Thoughts on the HIV/AIDS epidemic
-
- 3,99 €
-
- 3,99 €
Descrição da editora
HIV/AIDS is more divisive and destructive than any other disease - tearing apart communities and ostracising the afflicted. Award-winning novelist Uzodinma Iweala embarks on a remarkable journey around the African continent meeting individuals and communities that are struggling daily with the disease. He meets people from all walks of life, from sex workers to the truck drivers who frequent them; from the doctors and nurses who tend the sick; to the children orphaned by the illness and their adoptive families. He meets the wives of husbands with HIV and the husbands of wives with the virus.
Beautifully written and heart-breakingly honest, Our Kind of People goes behind the headlines of this epidemic to show the real lives affected by it, illuminating the scope of the crisis and a continent's desperate struggle.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nigerian native Iweala tackles Africa's AIDS crisis, examining its history and social stigma and talking to the activists, scholars, and doctors working to stop its spread. In discussing Western attitudes to the topic, he unpacks dehumanizing assumptions that only promiscuity, backwardness, or polygamy could explain such high rates of infection. He also speaks to people like Dr. Chukwumuanya Igboekwu, who works in an underfunded Nigerian clinic where he often pays for supplies out of his own pocket. The doctor notes that ashamed families often ask him to leave "HIV/AIDS" off death certificates. Idris, a community leader, frankly describes an infected woman's banishment from his village, explaining, "Everybody is afraid." Other interviews display a spectrum of HIV-positive people, like twenty-eight-year-old Angie, who lost her fianc and her job after contracting the disease, and activist Samaila Garba, a former police officer. The book also explores this epidemic's consequences, which include sub-Saharan Africa's low life expectancy just forty-five years , dwindling workforce, and innumerable orphaned children. This is an accessible book for those seeking to learn more about the crisis, and Iweala's passion and urgency is vibrant on the page.
