Books are key media in telling HIV/AIDS stories
Books are often easily overlooked as a medium for information dissemination and many journalists subconsciously exclude them when referring to the media.
Media includes newspapers, television, billboards, online publications, magazines, books, company newsletters to name but a few. It in this capacity, of being part of the media, that I want to look at the role books play in educating people about HIV/AIDS.
In June, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award was awarded to two books dealing with issues around HIV/AIDS . The authors are both people living with HIV.
Supreme Court Judge Edwin Cameron is one of the only public servants to publicly divulge his status. He records his experiences in Witness to AIDS, which deals with issues pertinent to the pandemic including the burning issue of HIV-denialism in the country.
Here is a chilling extract from Witness to Aids:
“AIDS is mouth and tongue and scar and nerve and eye and brain and skin and
tum and gut. AIDS is smell and feel – of sweat and grime and snot and breath and bowel and secretion, discharge, pus, putrescence, disintegration, excrement, waste. Human waste. AIDS is feeling – painful sharp tingling burning heavy dull weakening wasting enervating diminishing destroying bereaving. AIDS is fear. It is breathless and nameless. AIDS is stigma disgrace discrimination hatred hardship abandonment isolation exclusion prohibition persecution poverty privation. AIDS is metaphor. It is a threat a tragedy a blight a blot a scar a stain a plague a scourge a pestilence, a demon killer rampant rampaging murderer. It is made moral. It is condemnation deterrence retribution punishment, a sin a lesson a curse rebuke judgment. It is a disease.”
Journalist Adam Levin’s AidsSafari, co-winner of the award, is “a frank confession from a journalist and author described as an ‘exhibitionist and wayfarer’”, according to the back cover of the book.
This also from the cover of AidsSafari:
“With searing honesty, tender prose and outrageous humour, Adam Levin takes us through the daily trials of living with Aids, travelling from promiscuity and dangerous denial, through the terrors of imminent mortality, to face the realities of his disease.”
Liz McGregor’s Khabzela, the story of the life of the YFM DJ who died of the disease, was also nominated for the award. McGregor tells the story of how Fana Khaba struggled to come to terms with his disease, clutching at straws in order to save himself.
“… Fana and I continued our conversation. Conversation was not quite the correct word. I watched and struggled to extract a narrative as he see-sawed between despair and a manic bravado, only a tenth of which made any sense. All the while, he was hailing waiters with increasingly bizarre demands. “I’m feeling shaky. I need raw garlic!” Then he asked for olive oil.”
That books tackling this complex issue, in such a personal and intimate nature, are at last receiving literature accolades, should be celebrated and Sunday Times Alan Paton Award convener Michele Magwood echoes this sentiment;
“The books are skilfully written, elegant, yet accessible, the judges believed strongly that both Levin and Cameron displayed exceptional integrity and bravery in laying bare the intimate details of their experience. As such both works are of immense value at a time when the de-stigmatisation of Aids is one of the most critical defences in the fight against this disease.”
So, while we complain about our country’s poor media (read newspaper/television/radio) coverage of the pandemic, let us not forget the bigger picture. Other media like books can have a large impact in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
In fact, books are possibly more effective in educating people about AIDS than mainstream media because they are often written by people who are personally living with the disease, and are capable of far greater depth than a couple of newspaper columns or two minutes on the TV or radio news. It is infinitely better to read a personal account of someone’s battle against the virus than it is to read an article complied by an outsider.
More importantly I want to applaud the judges of the awards. It was brave move to choose these books as winners; it is a step forward for South African literature and one in the right direction. – Akhona Cira