Educator Patti Lather and psychologist Chris Smithies observed and chronicled support groups for women diagnosed with HIV. Whether black, Latina, poor, or middle class, the women in these groups share the common bond of living with HIV/AIDS, and they describe how it affects their lives in terms full of practical reality and moving poignancy, as they fight the disease, accept, reflect, live, and die with and in it. The authors weave into these accounts their own experiences as researchers, but also as women emotionally tied to the sufferings of sisters, mothers, wives, and lovers with HIV/AIDS. Finally, the reader is provided with statistics and fact boxes that put these womens words in context for a fuller understanding of the epidemic of HIV/AIDS as it affects its fastest growing population. In an epilogue, Lather and Smithies revisit these women in 1995 and 1996, not only to once again chronicle their lives with HIV/AIDS, but to visit the friends they had made and to mourn the friends they have lost.

Table of Contents

* Preface I: The Book * Preface II: The Women and the Support Group Meetings Story Series One: Life After Diagnosis * Im Gonna Die from Stress, Not HIV * Living with a Time Bomb * Full Blown AIDS Had Come: Lori * I Got Another Wake-Up Call: Linda B * Ive Got Some Stories That Would Curl Your Hair * And I Didnt Even Pay My Income Taxes: Amber * Intertext 1AIDS and Angels: A Cloudy Place Story Series Two: Relationships * The Phony Stuff, You Dont Want to Go Through It Anymore * Im Not Close-Mouthed at All: A Daughter * I Dont Have Fifty Years to Be a Mother: Lisa * Love and Prayers, Mom: Linda B * Im a Sexy Momma * Intertext 2The Angel of History: AIDS as a Global Crisis Story Series Three: Making Meaning * I Dont Know How to File It Away That This Has Happened to Us * Id Probably Be Dead if It Wasnt for HIV * Intertext 3Angelology: A History of Truths Story Series Four: Living/Dying With AIDS * We Are the Teachers * A Greater Risk of Hope: CR and Linda B * We Had a Real Nice Life: Louisa * Intertext 4Death Makes Angels of Us All Story Series Five: Support Groups * Its Taken Me Years to Get Here * Were Supposed to Be a Support Group * Seize the Day: Lori * Intertext 5An Ache of Wings: The Social Challenge of AIDS Epilogue * Troubled Reading: Our Bodies, This Book, This Fire Running Subtext * Our Learning Hearts: Chris and Patti