Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss, and What I Learned

"You are eighteen years old. You get up in front of a thousand people--your classmates, your friends, basically the people who make up your entire existence--and announce, 'I'm HIV positive.'" Told entirely in sequential art, here is the story of the life-changing friendship between the author, a cartoonist from Long Island, and Pedro Zamora, an HIV-positive AIDS activist, which was filmed day by day on MTV's Real World San Francisco. As a speaker and educator, a guest on many talk shows (including Oprah), and when his tragic death received front-page coverage in the press, Pedro taught a generation that AIDS was not a punishment for moral defects or a mere killer that reduced humans to wraiths. Rather, he showed how those afflicted with the disease could live and love nobly with intelligence, humor and great humanity. Judd Winick's compelling memoir allows each of us to experience the vitally important message Pedro brought us. Inspiring, moving, informative, and instantly accessible, Pedro and Me could become one of the books that defines a generation.