Customer Reviews

There Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have a few suggestions for those of you about to begin "There is No Me Without You."

First, do not attempt to read this book while having coffee and hot chocolate at Starbucks with your ten year old son. You will cry. He will be mortified.

Second, do not read the chapter about Haregewoin's daughter, Atetegeb, right before you drift off to sleep. Your dreams will certainly be haunted and unsettling. In your insomnious state, you will find yourself at the bedsides of your own children, gratefully watching them sleep and breathe.

Finally, do not so much as open the first page if you are facing any pressing deadlines or tasks (taking care of your children, for instance). Your laundry WILL pile up. Your children WILL go to school having eaten cookies and chocolate milk for breakfast. Your dog WILL look at you pleadingly to finally feed him, because you WILL NOT be able to put this book down.

I felt it only fair to warn you.

Haregewoin Teferra's story is precisely what the world needs to hear - a powerful reminder that one person can make a difference. As read by voice performer Julie Fain Lawrence this story is straightforward and true. While it would have been easy for the actress to lapse into sentimentality she never does so, speaking strongly, courageously, which certainly befits the life of Haregewoin.

A resident of Ethiopia, Haregewoin was devastated when she lost both her husband and her 23-year-old daughter within the space of five years. How does one react when everything in life they hold dear is taken from them? She became a recluse, isolating herself in a tin walled compound close to her daughter's grave. It was as if there was nothing on earth left for her and she was simply waiting to die.

All of this changed when a priest brought a teenager, orphaned by the horrifying AIDS pandemic that is sweeping their country, to Haregewoin. Then he brought another. As she began to care for these young ones her life changed and so did theirs.

It didn't take long before it was known that Haregewoin offered a haven for the lost - a baby was left at her doorstep, a grandfather gave up grandchildren he could not afford to feed, a young boy whose mother had died and whose father was terminally ill. Soon, there were sixty children in her care. A mighty task for a middle-aged 4' 8" tall woman. Yet she rose to it and more - she did so gladly, heroically.

Yes, this is a tragic story in many ways but it is also a hopeful one, a reminder of the resiliency of the human spirit and the generosity of the human heart.

- Gail Cooke

As the mother of two Ethiopian daughters I found this book to be incredibly interesting and touching. The statistics about the problem of AIDS in Africa are jawdropping. But the heart of the book is the story of this woman and the children she helps.

Though non-fiction, the book reads like a novel. I read it cover to cover in two very long evenings. A week after I finished it, I was already thinking about reading it again. Except I also wanted to share it with everyone I know-- what a dilemma! I may be buying another copy or two.

Read this book for yourself. You will be entertained. Your heart will be touched. And your view of the world will be broadened.

I completely agree with the first reviewer's comments. Ms. Greene manages to tackle a topic that reduces many of us to despair and hopelessness with grace, clarity, and even wit. More than any other book I've read on the AIDS crisis, this one is a real page-turner too. The compelling tale of Haregewoin Tesferra, a reluctant and flawed heroine, should engage anyone who cares about the fate of the most vulnerable children on the planet--those orphaned when their parents succumb to HIV/AIDS because no treatment is available to the vast majority of African victims. Ms. Greene doesn't let anyone off the hook for this monumental global injustice but she does suggest ways that every single one of us can be part of the solution. With her engaging descriptions of individual children among the 12 million or so estimated AIDS orphans, the author makes them as real as the children who sit at my breakfast table complaining about the brand of breakfast cereal available. This terrific book deserves a huge audience--and I'm going to start with my own teenage children!

I don't know about you, but I am not one of those people who looks at the vast problems of Africa, Orphans and the global spread of AIDS and says, "Yeah. I can wrap my mind around that."
Yet after coming across THERE IS NO ME WITHOUT YOU, an incredible book about this very subject, I feel differently. It was the subtitle, "One woman's odyssey to rescue Africa's Children" that made me brave enough to crack open such a tome. Anyone can relate to one person's story, one person's desire to rise above the self. The author is clearly a person who thinks about community, her journalist instincts mingling with a mother's compassion when she read of the "ridiculous number" of African orphans---twelve million and counting. "Who is going to raise twelve million children?" she wondered, and went to find out. She found this widow in Ethiopia, Haregewoin Teferra, who dealt with grief by taking in children no one else wanted-one, and then a few, and then a staggering amount--and still counting. The author, Melissa Fay Greene, has even adopted some Ethiopian children herself, in addition to her own four kids.
Yet if this was just a sweet book about loving mothers across the continents I don't think it would still be haunting me and spurring me to some action. Greene weaves throughout this
amazing tale the larger story of how this all happened---the global spread of AIDS, the attempts to stop it, the horrid inequities. Right now in western countries a relatively healthy person living with AIDS is popping some pills that would save the life of an African who doesn't know such medicine exists, couldn't obtain it if she knew it was out there, and will die due to this cold, hard fact. Whose fault is this? Greene makes it clear---drug companies, complicit governments (no U.S. administration, republican or democrat, gets off the hook here), and a myriad of logistical complexities.
But here's the thing: this book is not depressing. The writing is lively, even witty, with tons of great stories. This book is about love, and investment in children, an original tale of good, imperfect people doing what they can. You meet these vulnerable, tough little kids,so much like kids anywhere, you understand a beautiful faraway culture, and you think about what you can do. I reiterate:this book isn't depressing---not because the calvary comes and saves the day in the form of this smart author or her noble heroine---but because you get the sense that we're the calvary. I've already done one small thing about this, yet for a country with so much need, it feels huge. So many fights these days seem not worth fighting. You read THERE IS NO ME WITHOUT YOU and you're just so happy to find a reason to get on the horse.

When faced with the overwhelming nature of AIDS/HIV in Africa, we sympathize, shake our heads, and discount the idea there's anything substantial we can do about it. It's so uplifting to read how one woman, without a thought or even knowledge of the overwhelming nature of a problem, just started doing what she felt to be right and how that took on a life of its own and has provided so many children hope. This book is wonderful as not only an engaging biographical account of a hero, but also as a general overview on the AIDS pandemic in Africa and its effect on Africa's children.

This is the first book review I've written since about sixth grade. That is how strongly I feel about Melissa Fay Greene's new book. She tells the story of so many amazing people working to make a difference in the current desperation of Ethiopia. Her description of grief from a child or adult's perspective will literally knock you over. My husband and I wept through some of the experiences she tells. The amazing thing about this book, though, is that while her writing is honest and beautiful, she also masterfully weaves in the background that gives us a world context for the individual stories she writes of. She educates and enlightens us about the politics, history, and science that affect the current state of AIDS in Africa. At a time when Americans have almost forgotten the horror of AIDS, this is the most important book of our time. I don't believe you can read "There is No Me Without You" and not be challenged to act. You will find yourself considering adoption, activism, missionary work, or at least supporting the people who act on their beliefs. You will have the passion and the most up-to-date information on AIDS available to educate those around you about what is really going on, and what could help. I considered myself a compassionate and aware person before, but I can never be the same after reading Ms. Greene's book. I truly hope that anyone who ever considered adoption will pick this up. You won't regret it, and neither will the lives that you choose to touch because of "There is No Me Without You".

First, a confession: My family, joined together through adoption, is mentioned in this book. I admit to wanting to like this book, beginning to read with a certain prejudice, wanting the book to be good. Instead I discovered that Melissa Fay Greene's latest book is fantastic, a page turner, a book that I began one night and then continued to read into the wee hours, finding myself unable to put it down. You will laugh, you will cry, you will be amazed and depressed and convicted and yet you will be so glad you read this book.

Melissa Fay Greene tells the inspiring story of Haregewoin Teferra, an ordinary, imperfect, middle class Ethiopian woman, who takes in children during a time when even their own families are turning them away. Melissa Fay Greene puts faces and names to a pandemic so large that many of us feel that there is nothing we can do to help. Ms.Greene writes with such warmth and compassion that one can't help but feel connected to the people she writes about...the children and the families that are forced to give up their precious kids. Along the way we learn about Ethiopian history, the AIDs pandemic, and most importantly the impact a caring person can have on the lives around them. I could not put this book down.

Melissa Fay Greene (THE TEMPLE BOMBING) in THERE IS NO ME WITHOUT YOU adroitly attempts to put a face on AIDS in Africa, or more specifically, AIDS in Ethiopia. Her latest book is the story of Haregewoin Teffera, a widow who in her grief unselfishly opens her home in Addis Ababa to one (the fifteen-year-old, orphaned Genet), two (the hashish smoking Abel who might be 15 but could be 18)-- the numbers grow geometrically to forty-five, to eighty and still counting-- children orphaned by AIDS as well as those children living with AIDS. Sadly, through no fault of Ms. Greene (her book is most accessible and inviting to the reader) the problem is so vast that there are a few children we remember but so many that ultimately we cannot keep them separated. Haregewoin had a similar problem: "You can't love forty-five children; you can only take care of them in a maternal style. . . she did not know the names of those she snuggled."

Ms. Greene fleshes out Haregewoin's story with some history of Ethiopia, statistics on AIDS in both the United States as well as Africa and an especially damning account of pharmaceutical companies. There are few heroes among governmental leaders. The Clinton administration-- even though the ex-president has made AIDS his post-presidential project, was not without fault. And of course there is the abysmal record of Ronald Reagan whose second mention of AIDS, although it had been first mentioned by the media in 1981, was in 1987 when "59,572 AIDS cases had been reported and 27,909 people had died." His first utterance of the word was in 1986 when he told a cruel AIDS joke at a centennial rededication of the Statute of Liberty before a crowd that included President Francois Mitterrand and his wife. Much of Greene's information will break your heart: For example, in 1999 the doctor to patient ratio in Ethiopia was one to forty-eight thousand. The ratio in the U. S. is one to 142. Without life-saving medicine, eighty percent of children infected with AIDS in infancy will die before they are two years old. Stephen Lewis, the UN secretary-general's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, recalls that when he visited a fifth-grade class in Harare, Zimbabe, that eight out of ten students wrote essays about the deaths of their parents. School-age children, who should be going to school and playing with their friends, become heads of households.

Greene obviously puts her money where her mouth is. She and her husband have adopted two children from Ethiopia. While I understand that this is Haregewoin's story, I wanted to read more about Ms. Green's own experiences. Perhaps she is hesitant to discuss her children because of modesty or she did not want to intrude more than necessary into her narrative.

This book should be required reading for heads of government the world over.