Ryan White: The Teenager Who Changed How America Saw AIDS
He wanted to eat lunch with friends, get a job at a skateboard shop, have a crush on a girl, and maybe one day go to college.
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5 Questions to Reflect On
- 1. The Two Towns Kokomo and Cicero made different choices when faced with the same situation. What do you think allowed Cicero to respond so differently?
- 2. Agency in Impossible Circumstances Ryan White was thrust into public life without choosing it, and he used that platform to push back against the "innocent victim" framing that was being applied to him. What does it mean to find your own voice inside a story that someone else is trying to tell about you? Who in your own life has modeled that kind of agency?
- 3. Who Gets to Be Mourned Ryan's story moved Congress in ways that years of deaths and organizing had not.
- 4. Mothers and Advocates Jeanne White-Ginder was a working-class single mother who took on a school board, moved her family, and spent decades testifying before Congress.
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