Reading Guide

From 28

Author  Stephanie Nolen

Stephanie Nolen is the Globe and Mail’s Africa Bureau Chief. She is a six-time nominee for, and a two-time winner of, Canada’s top reporting prize, the National Newspaper Award. She was the recipient of the 2003, 2004 and 2006 Amnesty International Award for Human Rights Reporting, for her work in war zones in Uganda and Sudan; the 2004—2005 Markwell Media Award; and the 2007 PEN Canada/Paul Kidd Courage Prize.

She has reported from more than 40 countries around the world. Assigned to Africa with a mandate to cover the impact of the AIDS pandemic, she has also covered such issues as the political crisis in Zimbabwe, the oil industry in Nigeria and the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda.

Prior to her posting in Africa, she wrote on development issues and conflicts, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before joining the Globe in 1998, she was based in the Middle East for four years. She has written for publications including Newsweek, the Independent, Elle and Ms Magazine. She is also the author of Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race and Shakespeare’s Face.

Stephanie Nolen was born in Montreal and is a graduate of the University of King’s College in Halifax and the London School of Economics. She lives in Johannesburg with her partner and son.

1. Compare the various stories in 28. Which affected or interested you most deeply, and why?

2. What did you learn from reading 28? Did this book surprise you? How?

3. Has the West failed to act sufficiently to reduce the impact of AIDS in Africa? Why do you think this is?

4. Why do you think Stephanie Nolen chose to tell the story of AIDS in Africa through twenty-eight people’s stories, rather than (for example) a journalistic narrative?

5. As well as tracing the interactions of the AIDS pandemic with war, the book suggests that poverty and cultural factors–such as the status of women–have made it worse. How does it make this case? Do you agree?

6. Choose one of the issues raised by the book–that wealthy people in Africa are more at risk of AIDS than poor people, or that the African pandemic has been ignored because mostly black, poor people are infected–for debate.

7. If you could add a chapter to 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa what would it be?

8. Based on recent news stories, how do you see the AIDS pandemic developing in the next ten years?

9. Will you take any action to help AIDS charities or others as a result of reading this book?

10. Would you recommend 28 to other readers? Why, or why not?

In 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa, Globe and Mail Africa Bureau Chief Stephanie Nolen sets out to show the human face of the African AIDS pandemic. Travelling through sub-Saharan Africa, she lets twenty-eight people affected by the disease–from an Ethiopian commando to a South African activist, from a sex worker in Kenya to a nurse in Malawi–speak for themselves. Each story represents one million of the estimated twenty-eight million people living with AIDS in Africa; each brings to light a different facet of the AIDS pandemic. The result is an unsentimental, diverse and hugely affecting chronicle of human experience. 28 serves to correct the mistaken impression that an African with AIDS is somehow different from a Canadian with AIDS, “that to be an orphaned fifteen-year-old thrust into caring for four bewildered siblings, or a teacher thrown out of her house after she tells her husband she is infected–that somehow this would be less terrifying or strange for a person in Zambia or Mozambique than it would be for someone in the United States or Britain.”

But AIDS, Stephanie Nolen comments, is a mirror to the societies and cultures we create. Using the formidable reporting and analytical skills that have made her one of Canada’s foremost journalists, she seamlessly connects each personal story to the larger social, medical, political and cultural issues which lie behind it. Nolen discusses the epidemiological facts of AIDS and the different ways it impacts women versus men depending on prevailing social mores. She examines the disgraceful decisions made by political leaders in both Africa and the West that have worsened the AIDS crisis; and recounts the inspiring efforts of activists and researchers to force the horrifying epidemic into retreat.

The result is an indispensable guide to the science, history and politics of AIDS.

But the book never loses sight of the individuals at its heart. We see Dr. Christine Amisi and her family narrowly avoiding death at the hands of rebels in the Congo; her work treating AIDS with Médecins Sans Frontières shows how hard it is to “convert the dying to the living” in a war zone, and defines the inextricable links between HIV and military conflict. The experiences of Mohammed Ali, a trucker from Mombasa who buys sex every night on the road, are told with detailed sympathy, but broaden into a discussion of ideas of masculinity, the role of sex work in spreading AIDS–and the ever-present impact of poverty. In a village in central Mozambique, Anita Manhiça was infected with HIV by her husband and then accused of infecting him; her story might seem sadly typical, but it reveals new hopes for future treatments. A chapter on Nelson Mandela’s son Makagatho’s death from AIDS explores efforts to banish the stigma attached to the virus, while the struggles of the legendary AIDS activist Zackie Achmat bring to light the unorthodox, widely condemned stance that Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s successor as president of South Africa, has taken on the disease.

This is an astonishing and important book. Its personal stories are devastating and deeply inspiring, its analysis resonantly illuminating. A story of hope in the face of overwhelming despair, 28 is perhaps most of all a forthright call to act against what remains the most serious health care crisis in the world.


Vintage Canada

Wellness Non-Fiction Politics