The Orbis

Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: Media and book reviews

After earning a degree in English at the University of Texas and working as an elementary school teacher in the Washington, D.C., first daughter Jenna Bush (not to be confused with her twin, Barbara, who recently graduated from Yale) spent eight months in Latin America and the Caribbean as an intern with UNICEF, writing the case histories of impoverished children. The news media is turning its eye to Bush not as a hard-partying, Secret Service agent-shirking, delinquent college student, but rather as the author of a new book that is a call to action for HIV/AIDS awareness, among other issues.

Bush's debut book, "Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope," is the result of her internship with UNICEF. In roughly 300 pages (with brief chapters and larger print), Bush tells the story of a 17-year-old HIV-positive single mother living in an unnamed country in the Caribbean. The book traces Ana's childhood, from the death of her mother and baby sister due to HIV/AIDS, her molestation by her grandmother's boyfriend and through her physical abuse at the hands of various relatives. Perhaps the most poignant images are those that describe her terror of having friends find out her "secret" of being HIV-positive. For years, she concealed the fact she takes daily retroviral medications and visits the hospital for regular check-ups. A romance with another AIDS patient at their group home (or hogar, as Bush calls it, with her slightly stilted integration of various Spanish words into the text) results in the birth of Ana's daughter.

The most dominant portrait of Ana in this book is that of a child who has been forced to grow up too soon, and this, above all else, is what Bush seems to emphasize as the real eye-opener of her work with UNICEF. In the foreword, Bush states that "children need to be free to discuss all of life's issues-including the traumas of physical or sexual abuse, illness, or neglect-with safe and trustworthy adults who can educate them and help them handle their situations." And in "Ana's Story," safe and trustworthy adults are difficult to locate.

The text is accompanied by dozens of unobtrusive and enriching color photographs taken by Bush's fellow UNICEF intern and friend from college, Mia Baxter. The photos never fully reveal the faces of Ana or her daughter, which prevents the melodrama into which the book could have potentially fallen. "Ana's Story" could have easily become a splashy, exploitative book, with plenty of heart-wrenching photos and emotional appeals. The anonymity of the characters and their location is refreshing because it puts the emphasis on the narrative itself, and, subsequently, the lessons to be learned from it. Bush lets the tale of Ana's life stand on its own, leaving commentary for the afterword, making it clear that the issues represented are universal social problems and not just an isolated case.

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