No place left to bury the dead

I came across this book, published sometime last year, completely by accident. Surfing for something else, I found an interview on National Public Radio in the US with Nicole Itano, a name I'd never heard before, discussing her book that I'd never heard of before. This is now the third popular study of AIDS in Africa in the past year, if we include Alan Whiteside's little book which, while more general, pays most attention to Africa. Alan is widely known for his 15 years of leadership in the AIDS field and his HIV/AIDS: A Very Short Introduction, has a natural audience.

The second new popular book, of course, also included in our virtual book club, is Stephanie Nolen's powerful 28 Stories. Through the lives of 28 Africans (representing the 28 million Africans then thought to be infected with HIV), Stephanie tells the story of AIDS in Africa in all its grisliness. Given the reputation she had earned as the journalist who had publicized the pandemic in Africa more than any other in the world, 28 Stories arrived with a barrage of publicity. The endorsements on the jacket cover constituted a who's who of AIDS activists and other prominent humanitarians, from Bono to Emma Thompson to Aids-Free World's own Stephen Lewis. Not surprisingly, and entirely properly, 28 Stories has become a popular hit---not the usual result for a book on this topic.

And then, out of the blue, came Nicole Itano, with little advance publicity, no journal reviews that I've seen so far, no reviews on Amazon, and only one blurb on her book from Cornell West, an interesting, eccentric, progressive American academic/philosopher/activist but with no celebrity profile and, so far as I know, no great tie to the AIDS struggle. But here is Itano's No Place Left to Bury the Dead: Denial, Despair, and Hope in the African AIDS Pandemic , and I'm gratified to be able to report immediately that her book is terrific--- thoughtful, thorough, lucidly written, highly informative, and a perfect complement to Stephanie Nolen's fine effort.

In fact there are striking parallels between the two women and their books, not least that they are both North American reporters who lived in Johannesburg over the past several years and spent a great deal of time researching and writing about AIDS. And they cover at least some of the same territory. While Nolen's 28 stories include people in about a dozen countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Itano concentrates on three countries in southern Africa. They're three that Nolen also knows well---South Africa itself, Lesotho, and Botswana. But If the two women had any idea of the other's existence, or ever crossed paths, neither book reveals it.

For fortunate readers, the upshot of the two books is a wealth of learning of a genuinely original kind. We get to learn a great deal about AIDS, how it works, how it spreads, where it comes from. We get, especially from Itano, a deep, intimate look at the lives of three African women and their families and communities in a way that is rare and quite special; and we get the larger political context in which these people operate.

The cover blurb from Cornell West says the book gives us "ordinary people with extraordinary bravery and hope". I think it's probably obligatory to talk about bravery, extraordinariness and hope when reviewing this kind of book. It's probably obligatory for the author to do the same thing. But have no doubt—it's one of the great merits of Ms. Itano's book that she shows her subjects with warts and all. Many are not at all extraordinary, many are far from brave, and there is often little hope. There are even grannies who are shown to be drunk, callous and irresponsible. There's no doubt that in the past few years great progress has been made in the fight against AIDS in Africa, but in southern Africa much more suffering and death are still on the agenda, and will be for years to come. You'll get a better sense of their fate from the stories told be Nicole Itano.

Let me make two final comments about this book. First, a serious criticism. It has no maps. Readers have no idea where the characters can actually be found. This is frankly unfathomable to me, and should not have happened. It didn't happen in 28 Stories, which means Stephanie Nolen's editor did her work properly.

On a more general level, I'm greatly intrigued by Itano's title. Both halves of it echo titles right out of the 1994 genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi: The Graves Are Not Yet Full. Leave No One to tell the Story. And most famously, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with our Family. All are from real statements made by actors in the genocide drama, just as is No Place Left to Bury the Dead. And look at the sub-title: Denial, Despair and Hope in the African AIDS Epidemic. Unfortunately neglected now but a triumph when it was published only months after the genocide, a massive survey of the 100 days of slaughter produced by African Rights was titled Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance.

Nicole Itano has learned an impressive amount about AIDS and politics in southern Africa, but I've no idea whether she's read widely about Rwanda or has ever heard of any of these books. It seems to me unlikely that she'd come across the African Rights book, now sadly neglected. I think it's an interesting coincidence that she uses forms and language that sprang from the genocide, one of the terrible events of the last century. I think the AIDS pandemic, especially if you're watching it close up in the worst-affected countries of the world in southern Africa, might well make you think in genocidal terms. And just as the genocide was not about "ancient tribal rivalries" in which savage Africans simply slaughtered each other for no rational reason, so AIDS is not just about promiscuous Africans killing themselves and other Africans out of a lack of self-control and maturity. In both cases, the people who govern, many of the elites, those with power and privilege, have infinitely exacerbated the situation, either with their venality and hunger for power, as in Rwanda, or from indifference, ignorance, callousness or intellectual arrogance, as in many countries where AIDS has swept all before it. As with the 800,000 Rwandan Tutsi slaughtered in 1994, the women Nicole Itano introduces us to are not victims of unlucky fate. People with power are responsible for their suffering and death.

No Place Left to Bury the Dead: Denial, Despair and Hope in the African AIDS Pandemic is published by Atria; 1st Atria Books Hardcover Ed edition (November 20, 2007) ISBN-13: 978-0743270953
by Nicole Itano (Author)