African American Women and HIV/AIDS: Critical Responses

“..We are guided by our desire to privilege the voice of African American women, arguably, the most disenfranchised and least understood population in AIDS-related research and literature on women.” – Gilbert and Wright (page xii)

Authors: Dorie J. Gilbert & Ednita M. Wright

This book represents a shift in the readings from talking about the disease and its abstract impact on the lives of people who have it to talking with and about women living with HIV/AIDS, specifically black women in America. It is an important and necessary shift at this point in the course. I have had the chance to get familiar with concepts and theories that surround HIV/AIDS among black women and to develop a better understanding of the disease itself and approaches to dealing with it in both academia and in medicine.

I am more than ready to begin to deal more with what it means for a black woman, a human being, to contract and live with HIV/AIDS. Gilbert and Wright’s book is particularly useful because it not only discusses familiar concepts and ideas surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but it also speaks directly to African American women and considers solutions that have been sought to the challenge of HIV/AIDS among black women. This reading put a human face, that of a black woman, on this discussion of the disease.

It also highlights the factors that make African American women more vulnerable to contracting the disease. In this part of the discussion the text mirrors many of Collins’ ideas about the intersectionality of race, gender and class and the authors add stigma to the conversation. They even have a section that notes specifically that not enough is known about black sexuality, a lack that Collins’ book begins to address (16).

Many of the sociocultural causes of the spread of HIV/AIDS among African Americans, and women in particular, that the authors point out have come up in other readings and were things that I had figured out on my own. This includes factors like poverty, institutional racism and gender. But Gilbert and Wright also point out other interesting potential roots of the epidemic of HIV/AIDS among black women in America. This includes substance abuse, which has been hinted at in other readings, but Gilbert and Wright go into a detailed discussion about the history and roots of this problem among African American women and men and how it encourages the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The authors also point out disparities in health and mental health care and access as important factors. The gender imbalance among African Americans (more available women than men) is another interesting factor they also discuss. It speaks to the vulnerability argument that Collins’ makes in her book. Because there are less black men to go around, they argue, black women are more willing to accept less from a partner including overlooking infidelity in order to keep them and the security they often represent.

The text also builds on what Triechler introduced in her book about the social construction of HIV/AIDS. They agree that it was first established as a white gay male disease which left little room for other groups being infected with the virus. The authors attribute this initial construction of the disease to why early prevention campaigns targeted to the gay community had little impact among African Americans—they didn’t speak to them culturally.

The reading discusses how a group of nine women interviewed by one of the authors were each coping with having HIV/AIDS and their personal circumstances. Wright describes their situations as “living with dying,” (151). The details provided about the women’s state of mind and how they have lived and dealt with living with this disease is exactly what I’m interested in addressing for my masters project.

My original intent was to read select chapters of this book because I didn’t expect it to be relevant in its entirety to this course, because of its focus on American women. I think I’m right about it not being completely relevant to the course, but its content is important in terms of helping me understand the details of the issue for black women in North America, which is why I will finish the rest of the book for my own personal (and academic) purposes.