Never Give Up / Vignettes from Sub-Saharan Africa in the Age of AIDS
Winge, who runs a Minnesota nonprofit serving people with HIV/AIDS, went to Africa for six months to do fieldwork for a graduate program and witnessed the intersection of international health issues and racism in the small township of Guguletu, South Africa. Through conversations with AIDS sufferers in Guguletu and recollections of friends who died of AIDS in New York in the 1980s, Winge puts a human scale to the statistics regarding HIV infection and AIDS mortality. Once he got past the image of the ugly American with tourist intentions and do-gooder impulses, Winge slowly won the trust of the people of the townships and learned how they lived with the pandemic of AIDS. Winge asked residents about their wishes and heard of simple things: young people wanting to live to their 20s or 30s, older people wanting schooling for their children. This is a very personal appeal for greater awareness and outrage at the extent to which AIDS is scourging poor nations of the world, particularly in Africa, in hopes of provoking action.Vanessa BushCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved