Well-Meaning Book

Ana’s Story by Jenna Bush

This is a nice, well-meaning, sad to read but hopeful story of the life of one girl, HIV positive from birth, growing up in desperate poverty in Central America. The book’s subtitle is even “A Journey of Hope.” Ana, in her short life – she’s 17 by the end of the book – has seen both her parents and an infant sibling die from AIDS, been shuffled with her siblings from relative to relative, suffered sexual abuse at the hands of one family member, and turned over to a school for “difficult” children by another. She finds a boyfriend, gets pregnant, gives birth out of wedlock, and worries about her sister, too, as well as her daughter and her own future. In the course of this she meets Jenna Bush, in Central America working with UNICEF.


Ana and others like her impress on Jenna that they are “living with AIDS,” not dying from it, and that is the message of the book. It is well-meaning and all, but would it ever have gotten published if Jenna Bush was not the daughter of a sitting US President? I rather doubt it.


It’s a nice book, I read the “advanced readers copy” which included as those often do, notes like “color pictures will be in the final printing” and notes for “photo to come” but I don’t think adding color pictures will make it any more dramatic or sadder than it already is. It’s terrible to grow up poor, abused, neglected and marginalized, but the remarkable thing is that some people survive it.


Nice book, not terribly memorable, but certainly it means well.