- Person
- Nadine Gordimer
- Lived
- 1923–2014
- Field
- Literature
- From
- South African
The story
Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 in Springs, South Africa, to Jewish immigrant parents, and spent her life writing about her country and opposing apartheid. After apartheid ended, South Africa faced a new catastrophe in HIV/AIDS, and for people living with the virus, access to treatment was a matter of life and death.
Gordimer saw that musicians had done a great deal to support the roughly 40 million people around the world then living with HIV/AIDS, and she wanted writers to play their part too. Her answer was Telling Tales, an anthology of short stories she put together in 2004 to raise money for the Treatment Action Campaign. The campaign lobbies for government funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and care, and supports people living with the virus.
She persuaded about 20 major writers to give stories to the book, among them five Nobel laureates as well as Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Susan Sontag. Everyone involved donated their services, and all proceeds went to the Treatment Action Campaign. The stories were not about AIDS. In her introduction Gordimer explained that the book had no linking theme, only a worthy cause, and that the authors wanted to join the fight against a disease from which no country and no individual was safely isolated.
The idea was simple. Readers who bought the book for the pleasure of fine stories by famous authors would, at the same time, be supporting the campaign for HIV/AIDS treatment, care and prevention in South Africa. Because the writers and everyone else involved gave their work for free, the money raised could go to the cause rather than to fees.
Telling Tales was a practical way for literature to help. It turned the reputations of some of the world's best-known writers into money for the campaign for treatment and prevention, and it kept the AIDS crisis in South Africa in front of readers around the world. It also showed Gordimer, then in her eighties, still finding new ways to serve the people of her country.
Why it matters
Proceeds from Telling Tales supported the Treatment Action Campaign's work for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, and the book showed how writers can turn their work into practical help.
About Nadine Gordimer
Nobel-winning South African novelist whose fiction showed the world what apartheid did to every life it touched, and who fought censorship and racial injustice for six decades.
More about Nadine Gordimer
Sources
- Nadine Gordimer Wikipedia
- Authors help fight AIDS with 'Telling Tales' The Spokesman-Review
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.