Synopses & Reviews
and#160;There is an inherently powerful and complex paradox underlying HIV/AIDS preventionandmdash;between the focus on collective advocacy mobilized to combat global HIV/AIDS and the staggeringly disproportionate rates of HIV/AIDS in many places. Inand#160;
Treating AIDS, Thurka Sangaramoorthy examines the everyday practices of HIV/AIDS prevention in the United States from the perspective of AIDS experts and Haitian immigrants in South Florida. Although there is worldwide emphasis on the universality of HIV/AIDS as a social, political, economic, and biomedical problem, developments in HIV/AIDS prevention are rooted in and focused exclusively on disparities in HIV/AIDS morbidity and mortality framed through the rubric of race, ethnicity, and nationality. Everyone is at equal risk for contracting HIV/AIDS, Sangaramoorthy notes, but the ways in which people experience and manage that riskandmdash;and the disease itselfandmdash;is highly dependent on race, ethnic identity, sexuality, gender, immigration status, and other notions of andldquo;difference.andrdquo;
Sangaramoorthy documents in detail the work of AIDS prevention programs and their effect on the health and well-being of Haitians, a transnational community long plagued by the stigma of being stereotyped in public discourse as disease carriers. By tracing the ways in which public knowledge of AIDS prevention science circulates from sites of surveillance and regulation, to various clinics and hospitals, to the social worlds embraced by this immigrant community, she ultimately demonstrates the ways in which AIDS prevention programs help to reinforce categories of individual and collective difference, and how they continue to sustain the persistent and pernicious idea of race and ethnicity as risk factors for the disease.
Review
"This compelling book addresses the social, political, and economic dimensions of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the Black population in America, making a unique contribution to the topic that will fill a significant gap in scholarly literature."
Richard G. Parker
Review
andldquo;This compelling book addresses the social, political, and economic dimensions of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the Black population in America, making an extremely important contribution to the scholarly literature on the intersections among HIV/AIDS, race and racism, and gender and sexuality. Mackenzieandrsquo;s notion of structural intimacies is a very novel and innovative contribution. This book will have a major impact.andrdquo;
Review
"This book is the best treatment we have of the American catastrophe c
Review
"The intent [of Katrina's Imprint] is to reveal the human consequences of the city's devastation and to offer a moral perspective on what has been viewed too often as a failure of government, a 'natural' breakdown of technological systems. This volume reminds us of the persistence of racial divisions in American society and the many ways that African Americans are vulnerable to harm. Recommended."
Review
"
Katrina's Imprint is a unique book that makes critical contributions to our understanding not only of the event itself but also of the ongoing production of social inequalities in our society as a whole. The strong blend of empirically-based social science and textual and cultural analyses of
Katrina's Imprint leads to a holistic understanding of the ways that structural inequalities are reproduces, but also resisted and challenged."
Review
"
Katrina's Imprint provides some of the most valuable scholarly insights yet published regarding the 2005 disaster. It serves as an exemplary record of interdisciplinary scholars whose research illuminates Katrina's larger lessons."
Review
"With skilled use of primary and secondary sources,
Katrina's Imprint effectively shakes us out of our 'blissful ignorance' and fulfills its stated aim to broaden and deepen our understanding of Katrina.
Katrina's Imprint is important reading."
Review
andquot;As powerfully as Paul Farmer began the story of the stigmatization of Haitian Americans vis-andagrave;-vis HIV/AIDS, Sangaramoorthy reveals how the racialization of Haitians continues to be inscribed in a viral idiom. In this beautifully written account that will engage multiple audiences, constraints on how bodies can be voiced generate novel and unsettling insights that push the boundaries of medical anthropology and public health and reveal a frightening dimension of Miamiandrsquo;s status as a global city.andquot;
Review
andquot;Sangaramoorthyandrsquo;s precise and compelling book makes an excellent intervention into medical anthropology, particularly immigrant health, HIV/AIDS research, health disparities, and theories on the production and calculation of risk.andquot;
Review
andquot;Sangaramoorthy, a medical anthropologist with a masterand#39;s degree in public health, presents the results of ethnographic research on HIV/AIDs prevention initiatives and Haitian immigrants in Miami. A central argument, one that challenges public healthand#39;s reliance on socially constructed categories of difference, is well made and crucial. The use of ethnography to explore both HIV/AIDS surveillance and prevention are novel, thought-provoking topics, as these areas are more often addressed through quantitative research methods. This book will make a fine addition to health determinants and health disparities curricula, and is even accessible to advanced undergraduates. Highly recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;The South has been the epicenter of the U.S. HIV epidemic for the last decade, and the authors have used a balanced set of information from both surveys and personal observations to present a poignant and accessible portrait of the complexities of human health and disease.andquot;
Review
andquot;Expertly linking patientsandrsquo; pasts to their current struggles to obtain health care and support, the stories related here contextualize AIDS within the lived experiences of the poor and marginalized communities that bear the greatest burden of HIV in the American South. This book offers indispensable insight into the ways that large-scale socialand#160;forces shape the lives of those facing AIDS.andquot;
Review
"Two groundbreaking, indispensable guides for serious scholars of sexualities who wish to understand both the heterogeneous sexualities of African Americans and Latinos as well as how greater attention to race, ethnicity, class and culture provides important new directions for the field."
Review
"Filled with provocative arguments and illuminating insights, Black Sexualities marks a new and exciting epoch in the study of human sexuality and its interactions with race and class; a must-read for scholars and students of ethnic studies and human sexuality."
Review
"A path breaking contribution and the definite resource for interdisciplinary scholars in the growing field of Black sexualities. A highly sophisticated intervention that fills the existing void of empirical research in this area, while drawing from and critically engaging with the social and behavioral science literature. This volume will forever challenge us to rethink the categories, methods and approaches scholars use in this rapidly developing field of study."
Review
"Excellent for courses in black, Latino/a, women's, and LGBT studies, and sociology. Highly recommended."
Synopsis
Structural Intimacies brings together scholarship on the structural dimensions of the AIDS epidemic and the social construction of sexuality to address the continuing HIV epidemic in the Black population, It asserts that shifting forms of sexual stories, structural intimacies, are emerging and presents a compelling argument: in an era of deepening medicalization of HIV/AIDS, public health must move beyond individual-level interventions to community-level health equity frames and policy changes.
Synopsis
One of the most relevant social problems in contemporary American life is the continuing HIV epidemic in the Black population. With vivid ethnographic detail, this book brings together scholarship on the structural dimensions of the AIDS epidemic and the social construction of sexuality to assert that shifting forms of sexual storiesandmdash;structural intimaciesandmdash;are emerging, produced by the meeting of intimate lives and social structural patterns. These stories render such inequalities as racism, poverty, gender power disparities, sexual stigma, and discrimination as central not just to the dramatic, disproportionate spread of HIV in Black communities in the United States, but to the formation of Black sexualities.
Sonja Mackenzie elegantly argues that structural vulnerability is feltandmdash;quite literallyandmdash;in the blood, in the possibilities and constraints on sexual lives, and in the rhetorics of their telling. The circulation of structural intimacies in daily life and in the political domain reflects possibilities for seeking what Mackenzie calls intimate justice at the nexus of cultural, economic, political, and moral spheres. Structural Intimacies presents a compelling case: in an era of deepening medicalization of HIV/AIDS, public health must move beyond individual-level interventions to community-level health equity frames and policy changes
Synopsis
and#160;Inand#160;
Treating AIDS, Thurka Sangaramoorthy examines the everyday practices of HIV/AIDS prevention in the United States from the perspective of AIDS experts and Haitian immigrants in south Florida. Using in-depth ethnographic data, she underscores the difference between the global response to this public health crisisandmdash;where everyone is implicated as a potential carrier of riskandmdash;and the uncontested existence of racial and ethnic disparities in HIV/AIDS rates, access to treatment and care, and, especially, the stigma borne by carriers of the disease.
Synopsis
This extensively revised second edition presents twenty-five different case studies and incorporates research from the authorsandrsquo; recent quantitative study, andldquo;Coping with HIV/AIDS in the Southeastandrdquo; (CHASE). CHASE includes 611 HIV-positive patients from eight clinics in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana. This is the first cohesive compilation of up-to-date evidence on the unique and difficult aspects of those living with HIV in the Deep South.
Synopsis
Why does society have difficulty discussing sexualities? Where does fear of Black sexualities emerge and how is it manifested? How can varied experiences of Black females and males who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT), or straight help inform dialogue and academic inquiry?
From questioning forces that have constrained sexual choices to examining how Blacks have forged healthy sexual identities in an oppressive environment, Black Sexualities acknowledges the diversity of the Black experience and the shared legacy of racism. Contributors seek resolution to Blacks' understanding of their lives as sexual beings through stories of empowerment, healing, self-awareness, victories, and other historic and contemporary life-course panoramas and provide practical information to foster more culturally relative research, tolerance, and acceptance.
Synopsis
Katrina's Imprint highlights the power of this sentinel American event and its continuing reverberations in contemporary politics, culture, and public policy. Published on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the multidisciplinary volume reflects on how history, location, access to transportation, health care, and social position feed resilience, recovery, and prospects for the future of New Orleans and the Gulf region. Essays examine the intersecting vulnerabilities that gave rise to the disaster, explore the cultural and psychic legacies of the storm, reveal how the process of rebuilding and starting over replicates past vulnerabilities, and analyze Katrina's imprint alongside American's myths of self-sufficiency. A case study of new weaknesses that have emerged in our era, this book offers an argument for why we cannot wait for the next disaster before we apply the lessons that should be learned from Katrina.
About the Author
KEITH WAILOO is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University, and the author and editor of several books, among them
Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health.
KAREN M. O'NEILL is a sociologist and associate professor of human ecology at Rutgers University, and the author of Rivers by Design: State Power and the Origins of U.S. Flood Control.
JEFFREY DOWD is a Ph.D. candidate in the sociology department at Rutgers University.
ROLAND V. ANGLIN is the director of the Initiative for Regional and Community Transformation (IRCT) at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University.
Table of Contents
Identity Theories and New Frameworks
Nontraditional, Nonconforming, and Transgressive Gender Expression and Relationship Modalities in Black Communities
Creation Out of Bounds
On the Fear of Small Numbers
Blackness, Sexuality, and Transnational Desire
Part II
Pathologizing Black Sexuality
Dangerous Profiling
Revisiting Black Sexualities in Families
To Be Fluent in Each Other's Narratives
Part III
Prison, Crime, and Sexual Health in the United States
Black and Latino Same-Sex Couple Households and the Racial Dynamics of Antigay Activism
Racialized Justice Spreads HIV/AIDS among Blacks
Black Sexual Citizenship
Part IV
Blacks and Racial Appraisals
When Secrets Hurt
Black Female Sex Workers
Yes, Jesus Loves Me-A Case Study
Part V
Black Mother-Daughter Narratives about Sexuality
Black Youth Sexuality
"I'll Be Forever Mackin'"
Black Senior Women and Sexuality
Epilogue