Womanist AIDS Activism in the United States: “It's Who We Are,”

In Drs. Angelique Harris and Omar Mushtaq's book Womanist AIDS Activism in the United States: “It's Who We Are,” the authors deeply examine the many reasons Black women in the United States engage in AIDS activism. The authors use womanism as an epistemological framework to analyze the motivations for and approaches to this community-based activism. Harris and Mushtaq historically contextualize both AIDS and AIDS activism and demonstrate why Black women's organizing around it is so unique and specific; the thirty-six Black women AIDS activists interviewed throughout the book further contextualize the complicated and nuanced nature of Blackness, gender, sexuality, and AIDS research in recent Western history. As the authors write, “Research on HIV in Black communities, and among Black women in particular, often focus on the toll HIV has had on their lives” (1). Harris and Mushtaq point out that very little research explores the ways that Black women...