We Are All the Same: A Story of a Boy's Courage and a Mother's Love

by Jim Wooten

Overview

"Wooten has pulled off something close to miraculous... and touched the face of HIV/AIDS with compassion and humanity. —Alexandra Fuller, Chicago Tribune

"This is a book not to be missed." —People

"Amazing and tender... in this special book [Wooten] brings home the tragedy of AIDS." —Liz Smith, New York Post

"Wooten rightly disregards journalistic distance and writes himself into the work, making it read like a contemplative literary memoir." —Time Out New York

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143035992
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/25/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.03(h) x 0.62(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jim Wooten is ABC News' Senior Correspondent and contributes to World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightline, Good Morning America, and other ABC News broadcasts. In 1994, his reports from Rwanda and Zaire for World News Tonight and Nightline won the Overseas Press Club Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and the Joe Alex Morris Award from Harvard University for distinguished foreign reporting. Before joining ABC News, Wooten had been on the staff of Esquire magazine; written a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer; and served as a bureau chief, national correspondent, and White House correspondent for The New York Times.

Editorial Reviews

In 2004, 5 million people worldwide contracted HIV. Beneath that incomprehensible statistic are real people whose lives are being torn apart. We Are All The Same is the story of one AIDS victim, a young South African boy who became infected at birth. ABC News Senior Correspondent Jim Wooten unfolds the abbreviated saga of Nkosi Johnson, a Zulu boy who died when he was only 12, but not before he had become a human symbol of the uphill fight against this ravaging disease.

A veteran TV newsman's heartfelt account of the relationship between Nkosi, a Zulu boy with AIDS, and Gail Johnson, his white South African foster mother, a woman committed to giving her doomed, beloved child the best life possible. A public figure in South Africa since 1997, when Gail successfully campaigned to have him admitted to the local public school, Nkosi was about to deliver a keynote address to the 13th International Conference on AIDS. In the audience, the author was immediately captivated by the frail, extraordinarily charming 11-year-old. Wooten, a senior correspondent for ABC News, was no stranger to Africa and its myriad of social, political, and economic troubles when he was assigned a story on Nkosi in 2000. He eventually put together the life of Nkosi's birth mother and her family as well as that of Gail and her husband and children, all against the background of apartheid and its aftermath in South Africa and the rising tide of AIDS, which was sweeping across the continent. In 1991, after witnessing a friend's brother dying of AIDS, Gail established a refuge for AIDS victims in the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, where Nkosi's AIDS-stricken birth mother Daphne brought her two-year-old son to live. A year later, when the refuge ran out of money and was forced to close, the desperate and soon-to-die Daphne agreed to let Gail take Nkosi home and keep him as part of her own family. He lived with the Johnsons until his death in 2001. Woven into this love story between a black child and his white foster mother is the bleak tale of South Africa's failure to deal with the massive problem of AIDS. Former president Nelson Mandela essentially ignored the problem, and currentpresident Thabo Mbeki insists that HIV doesn't exist, despite Wooten's claim that South Africa now has some four million AIDS victims, with each day bringing some 1,700 new infections. These numbers register in the brain, but the story of one valiant little boy and his remarkable foster mother goes right to the heart.

Kirkus Reviews

Amazing and tender.... In this special book [Wooten] brings home the tragedy of AIDS.

The New York Post

"Amazing and tender.... In this special book [Wooten] brings home the tragedy of AIDS." ---The New York Post

From the Publisher

We are all the same” was the closing line of young AIDS sufferer Nkosi Johnson’s message to participants in an AIDS conference in Durban. Born HIV-positive, Nkosi was adopted by Gail Johnson, a white South African woman, after his mother’s death from AIDS. His story became a symbol of the AIDS crisis in Africa when Johnson tried to enroll him in a public school. ABC News reporter Jim Wooten followed Nkosi’s experiences as he became a celebrity in his own country and worldwide. Wooten makes the story of Nkosi’s short life a personal one; his admiration for the boy is clear. Inspiring and touching by turns, the story puts a human face on an emotional issue. J.A.S. 2006 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

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