Author:
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Joe Richman
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Source:
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Radio Diaries
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Date:
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04/19/2006
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Format:
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Long feature
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(registration and/or payment may be required)
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This radio piece about a young woman living with AIDS in South Africa is an innovative and beautifully effective work of narrative. Since airing on National Public Radio, the story and Thembi Ngubane continue to advance the world's understanding of people living with AIDS.
Thembi Ngubane is one of the most compelling characters we've encountered in a nonfiction narrative. She is an exceptionally likable narrator, both open in her feelings and poised in her dignity. She is heroic in her approach to her disease and her relationships with those around her. Joe Richman, executive producer of Radio Diaries, gave Thembi a tape recorder in 2005, and for a year she kept an audio journal. All that tape was edited into a sequence of self-reflection and scenes. The piece is a model for effective sequencing in any work of narrative, for turning a mass of material into coherent, emotionally engaging and purposeful work.
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© 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College