Paul Renfro examines the life of Ryan White, the poster child for an innocent AIDS victim in the 1980s. White was diagnosed with AIDS stemming from his hemophilia blood treatments. Since White was just a child, and neither gay nor an intravenous drug user, the nation took notice of his plight to attend his school, which he had been expelled from after his diagnosis. The book also highlights the political response to the AIDS crisis and the marginalized populations disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS.

I wanted to read this book because I remember Ryan White growing up and I wanted to learn more about his fight with AIDS. I learned a lot about him, his community’s reaction to his diagnosis, and HIV/AIDS history in general. The epilogue also goes into Mike Pence and his policies.

Thank you to NetGalley and University of North Carolina Press for an advanced copy of this book.

Thanks to the University of North Carolina Press and NetGalley for the complimentary digital copy of this book; I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Ryan White was just two years older than me, so I knew his story well from the mainstream media's coverage of his town's refusal to let him attend classes because he had AIDS.

I am glad that the author is revisiting White's story for a new generation and how people with AIDS were treated in the early years. The thesis of the book is that Ryan White got treated differently because he contracted the disease "through no fault of his own." (This phrase is bludgeoned into us throughout the book) What should be the takeaway from this book is that even among AIDS sufferers, they were treated differently based upon their skin color or sexual orientation and how the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations failed to respond to the crisis. However, the execution of that is hopelessly lost among the repetitive word salad that I read.

This book is an interesting look at why Ryan White became the poster boy for the AIDS epidemic in the 80s. Early on the media, politicians, and society at large were content to ignore AIDS or not give it the money, attention, and empathy it deserved because of the groups of people it was impacting most: queer people, intravenous drug users, and people of color. Especially queer people and IV drug users were seen as having brought it upon themselves because of their actions. Ryan White was a straight, white, young kid who was infected through blood products he used because of his hemophilia. So in the eyes of many he was an “innocent” victim who was infected “through no fault of his own.” His fight to be able to attend school like everyone else thrust him into the spotlight. Yes, lots of people learned about AIDS through Ryan’s story, and they had empathy for his situation. But why did they not have that same empathy for the scores of marginalized people who became sick and died before Ryan?

Paul M. Renfro explores how the way Ryan was spoken about in the media, by politicians, and by the general public enforced a hierarchy of people with AIDS with so-called “innocent” victims at the top. The people who got the most attention, like Ryan, were people from groups who weren’t hit the hardest by the epidemic. But they could be seen as politically neutral or “safe” because they weren’t from marginalized groups. Because of the narratives that followed, it made it difficult for attention and funding to get to the places where it could’ve done good for the communities that had the most cases. Like how the Ryan White CARE Act limited the ways that organizations who dealt with intravenous drug users or queer people were able to use the funding.

I do think that this book is best read by people who already have a good understanding of the AIDS crisis overall. The book doesn’t go into too much detail with the background of the beginning of the epidemic or the political, medical, and activist responses before Ryan White. The book is also extremely repetitive with how many times it mentions that a hierarchy of victims was reinforced or that something helped create the national pedagogy around AIDS. Many times it felt like the examples could’ve just spoken for themselves rather than having to repeat the same explanations of the point.

The Life and Death of Ryan White is a very thought provoking read, especially for people who were already familiar with Ryan’s story. It causes readers to examine the ways that Ryan was treated differently than other people with AIDS and why that was the case. Definitely check this out if it sounds interesting to you.

I feel like this is a very one sided story about Ryan White. It was not his fault that he became the face of the HIV/Aids crisis in the 80s but this author makes it seem as if it were chosen to be this way. Also, he makes assumptions into who Ryan was...does he know for a fact that Ryan was heterosexual? No, because I'm sure Ryan didn't know whom he loved yet. Its horrible that those who suffered with HIV and Aids were villanized for it but the attention Ryan received fromnthe press and the country helped secure funding for healthcare for those suffering from Aids. This healthcare saved many lives regardless of what brought it to be.

A very interesting look in the life of one of the very first child infection by the aids virus .
Ryan will always be remembered for his fight for his right to go to school during his plight of this illness.

A complimentary copy was provided in exchange for an honest review. And this is my opinion; if you would like to have a healthy and respectful dialogue regarding this subject, I welcome that. And I fully embrace someone who respectfully educates me to see this topic from a perspective I have not thought of. I tried to explain my thoughts as clearly as possible but I don't discount I didn't always articulate it well. Be kind. Now to my review/thoughts.

I was born in 1982 so I clearly don't remember Ryan White. I was intrigued by his story and I am always eager to learn (I am a history major, lol).

To start, the core message of this book is that it's not healthy or fair to distinguish those with HIV/AIDS as either innocent or not innocent. I struggled with this throughout. The entire reason that Ryan White became so famous is that he contracted AIDS through infected blood to manage his hemophilia, not because of a sexual encounter or drug use. I don't like to think of those who did contract AIDS through sex, drugs or something else seen as risky as uninnocent, but one has to admit that a child (or adult) who otherwise lead a basic life and contracted the disease due to infected blood doesn't have the same element of responsibility.

In the same context of someone who lives an extreme lifestyle such as rock climbing, bungee jumping, sky diving, car racing, horseback riding, and so many other things. Those who choose to live life to the extreme and I have to assume have fun doing it, all accept the risk that does go along with those extremes. When one chooses to have sex, regardless of how careful, there are still risks and that is an accepted risk by both consenting parties. Let's not dig in to all the political aspects of these. I'm just making a point that with life there are risks - period. Ryan White himself took on risks because neither he nor his mother enforced the need for him to wear a helmet when he rode his bike! Seriously? This was before he contracted AIDS. Again, risky behavior that had something tragic happened, it was a known risk both of them accepted and should and would have accepted the responsibility for their choices (the book doesn't mention any bike accidents that I recall). Is it a matter of innocent or not innocent? I don't know of a better term other than responsibility. Once the means by which HIV/AIDS was known to travel, and people did not take the necessary precautions, they own that choice. Someone who did not make a choice that led to their contracting HIV/AIDS, I see this differently and the only term that applies in that situation is innocent. By no means does that mean either one deserves more or less treatment, or don't deserve respect and compassion, and everything else. I just don't fully embrace the core message of this book.

Since Ryan was labeled as straight, white, attractive in the safe context of a young boy, and "innocent," he became the poster boy for the epidemic. There was a lot of emphasis in the book about his label of innocent, as well as the fact that he is straight and white. The book states this diminished the larger demographic (black, brown, queer, etc.) who made up a larger percentage of those infected. I'm not quite sure how to phrase this: What I do know of the 80s and 90s AIDS epidemic is that there was very little support from any political sphere to spend money and time to solve a "gay" problem. It was through the efforts of activists and influential people who pushed and fought to get help. Would that help have come slower still if faces such as Ryan's not been used to show that it's not just a "gay" disease? In all honesty, I feel that if white, straight, "innocent," people didn't get the disease then the eventual support for AIDS would have happened even slower. Face facts, marginalized people are pushed aside and left forgotten. "That's their problem; it doesn't impact me." This is the mentally of so many people in power during this time. I mean, it was Ronald Reagon!

As the years went on, famous people did make public that they had AIDS, and this book does speak about a few, such as Rock Hudson, though while he was gay, he was also a beloved Hollywood actor and there was a tremendous outpouring of support for him. But only because he was a beloved famous actor - had he been a regular Joe off the street, nobody would have paid him any attention.

Face it, fame in any context that gets the policy makers and money holders of a nation to pay attention and actually do something, that's a win even if it's unfair for those left out of the spotlight (meaning those who did not see their likeness included in the AIDS crisis).

This book really got me thinking and I did learn a lot. What surprised me was how much of this story focused beyond Ryan White after his passing. The majority does always bring the point back to Ryan, and what he went through to go back to school and deal with his illness (and sudden fame), but it came right up to current times and COVID-19 and mpox (otherwise known as monkey pox - I don't think it's called that now, just mpox). It showed how the country deals with these types of epidemics and the parallels in how the US government handles them.

Aside from the story, the structure and formatting were off putting. This is an ARC so I hope some of those issues will be fixed, but what I don't think will be removed is the constant repeating of details over and over and over again that I've read and learned and absorbed and didn't like having to keep reading it. The fact that Ryan was white, that he was a kid, straight, etc., the same phrasing is throughout the book, but it was just rehashing a previous section, and I wouldn't learn anything new.

Overall 3 stars.

Thank you for reading.

The Life and Death of Ryan White is a well researched and detailed look at the life and impact of young AIDS patient Ryan White and how his diagnosis and later passing impacted the view of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and in modern day.

This book examines the life of Ryan White, a young boy who contracted HIV/AIDS through a blood product. He was given a sort of celebrity during his life because he was banned from going to school due to the ignorance of people regarding the transmission of the virus. This book chronicles his legal fight as well as his overwhelming drive to be a "normal" kid. He lost his battle with the virus in April of 1990.
I enjoyed the majority if this book. It incorporated telling Ryan's story with the general public's response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I think it ran a little long for my liking, but overall very informative and a heartbreaking story of an innocent kid.

I’m going to just say now that I know I’m being a hater and I feel kind of bad but only a little.

This is possibly the most repetitive book I have ever read in my life. Each section read like separate news articles. Every time there was a section change, it was as if the author thought the reader got amnesia so he repeated every single thing we already know. This is quite a short book but it probably could’ve been cut in half and then some and still gotten the same points across.

I wish the author had expanded more on what was happening with other AIDS patients during the same time of Ryan’s struggles as a juxtaposition instead of just repeating “unlike men who have sex with men and IV drug users” and providing absolutely no additional context. I also wanted at least a timeline of major events in the AIDS crisis (AIDS discovered, test for AIDS created, HIV discovered, first time Reagan publicly said AIDS, antiretrovirals discovered and their FDA approval timeline, etc). There was none of that. The author’s time and my time would’ve been much better used if this book included those things rather than repeating the same facts ad nauseam.

I know Ryan most likely just regurgitated the things his mom thought and said but it was A LOT. The internalized ableism is off the charts. By framing himself as a “perfect innocent victim” of AIDS caused by the promiscuity and drug use of others, he contributed to deeply homophobic and racist ideas that still cause actual harm to this day. He and his mom also spent a lot of time talking about how they just wanted him to be a normal kid at a normal school but when his story hit national news, he spent a very large chunk of time traveling around the country going on news shows and attending galas and events rubbing elbows with very famous people. That is not normal kid behavior and it’s not public school kid behavior. Normal kids aren’t allowed to miss school to go on Good Morning America multiple times. And Elton John and John Cougar Mellencamp weren’t at the bedside and funeral of normal kids. That’s not an attack on Ryan or the support he got, it’s really just a comment on how disingenuous the entire “normal kid” argument was.

Instead of completely demonizing the town where they lived to anyone and everyone that would listen, I wish the Whites would’ve spent their air time discussing what absolute failures Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush when it came to their response to the AIDS epidemic. Because while a small town spreading misinformation about AIDS amongst themselves is pretty bad, two sitting presidents completely ignored that AIDS even existed is insurmountably horrific. If it wasn’t clear, as far as I’m concerned Reagan and Bush can eat glass for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert. I hope the souls of every single person who has ever died from AIDS haunt them both for every second of eternity.

I mean it when I say fuck the FDA for putting profit over safety and for failing to implement basic safeguards for blood products especially because HIV is far from the only blood borne illness. It is truly baffling to me that the FDA got off basically scot-free while gay men and drug users were absolutely crucified. The blood would not have ever been tainted if the FDA did the absolute bare minimum.

Obviously Ryan White’s story is incredibly tragic and absolutely could’ve been avoided. I just feel so much for all of the people who died from AIDS with absolutely no dignity and in silence because the healthcare system and the government and society at large failed them and vilified them and demeaned them.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review.

Paul M. Renfro traces the chronology of a boy born with hemophilia who contracted HIV through contaminated blood products when he was just 14, and subsequently became the poster boy of HIV/AIDS education.

I picked this book because, earlier this year, I read Richard A. McKay’s “Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic”. This was a pretty good complementary read, offering the flip side of the coin of the narratives that shaped the AIDS crisis in the 80s and beyond.

Renfro argues that, while Ryan’s story was important in challenging early misconceptions about the transmission of HIV, his image as a white, cis, straight, “wholesome” boy also served, on one hand, to establish a hierarchy among AIDS patients: “innocent victims” like Ryan, who contracted the virus “through no fault of his own” (with white children at the top of this pyramid), and “guilty spreaders”, ie, gay men and drug users who not only had their behaviour to thank for the disease, but were also responsible for passing it on to others - like Gaëtan Dugas, aka “Patient Zero”. On the other hand, Ryan’s fight to return to school, his outlook on his condition, which emphasized “normalcy”, and his advocacy for education also shaped a “national pedagogy” that placed responsibility on the individual rather than on systemic issues.

The author also examines the classist prejudices that were present in the national demonization of Kokomo, Ryan’s hometown, during the rise in “colorblind rhetoric” - again, centering the blame on the abhorrent attitudes and actions of a few white bigots and away from the systemic structures in place.

The book goes on to analyse the political climate during the Reagan and Bush administrations; how the narratives around Ryan’s activism shaped the emergency act that provided federal funding for AIDS patients; how his image was used both by opponents and supporters of the act even decades after his death; and the ways in which the act ultimately failed to provide relief for the communities most affected by AIDS.

Finally, as in McKay’s book, the political response to the AIDS epidemic was held up against that of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in how both health crisis continue to impact historically excluded communities disproportionally.

This was a very clear and comprehensive book; not being USAmerican, I knew nothing about Ryan White prior to this and I come away with plenty of knowledge and insight about this particular chapter of AIDS history.

My one critique is that the book had quite a bit of repetition in ways that seem to speak more of a lack of editing than to wanting to emphasize a point. Just to name two examples, the line “Ryan White became the most famous PWA in the United States (and perhaps the world)” was repeated almost verbatim, as was the enumeration of Ryan as a “young, white, straight, popular” PWA.

Other than that, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the topic.

This is a really interesting book! Clearly well researched by Renfro with lots of quotes and references. It’s a very accessible book on AIDS/HIV and introduces the concept of the moralisation of disease well. Although I found this book interesting, there are parts of the book that I think could be shorter and a fair bit of repetition throughout. This doesn’t take away from the clear research and thought that has gone into this book, however. Thank you for the advance copy.

So imagine you knew of the Ryan White docudramas and interviews in the 1980s. And your mother had a book about him in the 1990s. And you lived through the horrific lies and hateful cruelty spread by anti-science “compassionate conservatives” from about 1984 onward. You’d think you’ve got a good grasp on who Ryan White was, what he represented, and how he changed the hearts and minds of a nation, right?

Nope. Wrong. I mean, some of that, absolutely. But he was also a prop. A boy living while knowing he’s dying was used as a wedge in so many ways. He also sort of played up to it because the innocent white boy is the perfect poster child to assuage those who finally admitted that AIDS was a thing because their friend, Mr. Hudson, died. Because we couldn’t possibly humanize anyone else who contracted this disease, could we….

This is an excellent map of how we got from fearful hate to somewhat acceptance to ignorant hate all over again. It’s proof that AIDS is still here. It’s a wake up call to the masses. Politicians messed up and didn’t trust science. People messed up and didn’t listen to logic. And one particularly awful person who continued to evoke Ryan White’s name in his victory laps against epic increases in HIV/AIDS cases under his watch should remind us all that science needs to be at the wheel in times of medical need.

This will infuriate you all over again. It’ll make you sad and mournful. It’ll remind you of the hard work so many hes, shes, and theys did to help others either survive or die with any dignity they could hold. And hopefully, it’ll make you think about how many lives were lost, but also how many remain here today because of those people and the science that kept right on working to try to help the world in a time of need.

Even if you think you know the story of Ryan White and his impact on the AIDS/HIV virus - you don't! This book is thoroughly researched and broken down into logical chapters. However, if you think that this book merely focuses on Ryan and his life with the disease you will be disappointed. This story is much more than that and as it should be. A very educated read. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley for this e-copy of The Life and Death of Ryan White. by Paul Renfro in exchange for a honest review.This is the story of a brave young boy with hemophilia who contracted AIDS at a young age as a result of a blood transfusion .Through no fault of his own he contracted this terrible disease that took his life in 1990 at the age of 18.He was ostracized and not allowed to attend school in his hometown because of the ignorance of how AIDS is transmitted.Even though he didn’t live long , his life was filled with purpose and even after his life his name was used to get AIDS funding.A very powerful book about how one is never too young to make a difference in the world..

“The Life and Death of Ryan White” was a very quick and coherent read, and definitely recommended for people who have never before read anything about or relating to HIV/AIDS. It is clear that the author put a lot of effort and time into writing this book— I love seeing numerous references and quotes. However, I can’t shake off the feeling that this book could’ve been shorter; I feel like certain points in this work were repeated ten or more times, which is completely unnecessary in my opinion. I would also appreciate more speeches/quotes from Ryan himself rather than third parties. Moreover, I wish that this biography focused more on Ryan from a different perspective rather than being an AIDS victim/household name— is it really “the Life and Death of Ryan White” if it mainly focuses on one aspect of his life? Anyway, I am glad I read this book. It is not great, but it is good.

I'm giving this book a tentative four stars, perhaps more like three and a half. I think that Renfro has a lot to offer here. He has clearly done his research into the early AIDS/HIV era, including Ryan White as well as the other early patients, the gay activist community, etc. I think his main point--that Ryan White was an atypical AIDS patient in numerous ways and that the idea of his "innocence" permanently clouded the discourse--is insightful and, to my mind, accurate. Where Renfro fails is that it begins to come off like he has a personal vendetta against Ryan White. There's a lot of focus on particular things he said as a teenager, picking them apart for bad ideological underpinnings. He takes great issue with White's (and his mother's) resistance to the idea of disability and the desire to be regarded as normal and blameless. At the end of the day, Ryan White was a disabled, undereducated *kid*--and I refuse to blame him for the discourse surrounding him. If he was constantly at star galas, so what? For better or worse, that is a way to access power. And, if he enjoyed it? He was a teenager from Indiana. You'd be hard-pressed to find a pre-internet kid who wouldn't have gone bonkers to meet Michael Jackson, Elton John, or any of the other celebrities who flocked to him. At the end of the day, we can only criticize--and Renfro does--the people who chose to elevate him. But I did feel like Renfro was injecting 21st century values onto the 20th century. Disability was only beginning to not be regarded as an individual failing. Whatever little sympathy there is for IV drug users now, there was even less then. I would have appreciated Renfro shifting his lens a bit. The research is good. I just struggle with a lot of his interpretation.

The Life and Death of Ryan White by Paul Renfro is a well researched, well written reflection of Ryan White and his life and legacy. More than 30 years have passed since his death and this book looks back on his life through the lens of the twenty first century. It is fascinating to observe how learnings from how Ryan White was treated are applicable to learnings from the COVID pandemic. This comparison gives the reader a lot to ponder.

I highly recommend this book. Sometimes the writing was a little repetitive which is why I would give this book four stars.

Thank you to NetGalley and University of North Carolina Press for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.