My Own Country (Verghese) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The greatest strength of this eloquently written book is its ability to weave together all those separate strands. It is at once a previously untold story of AIDS in America, a story of the South, a story of the modern-day immigrant experience in America and a story of a personal journey within the medical profession. Dr. Verghese illumines a number of landscapes here, and does it with more than a touch of the poet. He writes, for example, about the life inside the hospital—but not just any hospital. His greatest affection is reserved for the patients and staff of the Veteran's Administration Hospital, that perennial poor relation of the medical system; perhaps never has a V.A. hospital been written about with such glowing lyricism.
Perri Klass - New York Times Book Review


This extraordinary book is ostensibly "about" a doctor caring for persons with HIV/AIDS. That it is, but it is also a book containing multiple texts. It is a doctor's personal journey toward understanding the multiple meanings of HIV/AIDS for those who have it and those who care for them. It is the story of a physician, an Indian, born in Ethiopia to Christian expatriate teachers, [who has been] in America since 1980... trying to determine the meaning of "home." It is, at the same time, a glorious pastoral account of practicing medicine in Tennessee—here making a house call to Vicki and Clyde, whose trailer is perched on the side of a mountain, now traveling through the Cumberland Gap to a cinder-block house to see Gordon, another native son who has come home to die. On still another level it is the story of a man trying to understand what it is like to be gay; a man trying to integrate his passion for his work with his life at home; a man trying to explain to his wife (and sadly, even some of his peers) his commitment to caring for persons infected with the virus.
Literature, Arts and Medicine Database


When infectious-disease specialist Verghese, the Ethiopian-born son of Indian schoolteachers, emigrated to the U.S. and settled in Johnson City, Tenn., in the mid-1980s, he finally felt at peace "in my own country'' at last. But his work at the Johnson City Medical Center soon led him into a shadow world of Bible-belt AIDS, often without the support of his colleagues. Verghese discovered a local gay community that was then untested for the HIV virus. If revealed, these people's closeted relationships would have, writes Verghese, made them stand out "like Martians.'' The author tells the stories of several patients, including the gay man who must reconcile with his father and the "innocent'' man who has contracted AIDS through a contaminated blood transfusion but who, concerned about society's response to his plight, keeps his disease a secret even though he believes that "this thing, this virus, is from hell, from the devil himself.'' Verghese reveals his own confusions about homosexuality, immigrant identity and his wife's fears about his health. Writing with an outsider's empathy and insight, casting his chronicle in graceful prose, he offers a memorable tale that both captures and transcends time and place.
Publishers Weekly


In fall 1985 Verghese—who was born in Ethiopia of Indian parents—returned with his wife and newborn son to Johnson City, Tennessee, where he had done his internship and residence. As he watched AIDS infect the small town, he and the community learned many things from one another, including the power of compassion. An AIDS expert who initially had no patients, Verghese describes meeting gay men and then eventually others struggling with this new disease. Verghese's patients include a factory worker confronting her husband's AIDS, bisexuality, and her own HIV status and a religious couple infected via a blood transfusion attempting to keep their disease secret from their church and their children. This novelistic account, occasionally overly detailed, provides a heartfelt perspective on the American response to the spread of AIDS. —James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P . L .
Library Journal