The Blind Spot in AIDS Discourse: The Lived Experiences of African American HIV Positive Mothers (2010)
Undergraduate: Tiara Willie
Faculty Advisor: Michele Berger
Department: Biology
The AIDS epidemic is a politicized discourse that affects African American women but traditionally, ignores the lived experiences of African American mothers. The invisibility of African Americans mothers represents a blind spot in the AIDS discourse which my research attempts to evaluate. My research aims to create an interdisciplinary space that examines the stigmatization of AIDS experienced by African American HIV positive mothers, the devaluation of Black womanhood, and the romanticization of motherhood. As a result, my research questions attempt to understand the social stigmas associated with being an African American HIV positive mother in America and if the experiences of HIV/AIDS affect mothering practices. Using qualitative methods, I conducted a semi structured telephone interview with an African American mother with HIV/AIDS that has published a journal about her experiences. During the second phase of this research, I conducted three “lived experience” interviews that primarily focused on the interaction between motherhood and HIV/AIDS. The “lived experience” interviews with the other participants were on average an hour and a half. Within these time frames, both the interview and the narratives, the participants were able to address my questions and expand on their lived experiences. In order to represent my participants’ stories accurately, I organized the “new emerging” themes into two categories: infectious and healthy. In my research project, “infectious” pertains to the ability to compromise and in extreme cases, eradicate one’s agency. More specifically, there were “infectious” themes in the narratives that seemed to disable the participants’ abilities to change their social position. On the contrary, “healthy” pertains to the ability to promote agency. The findings from this research provide critical insights into the plasticity of the “true” lived experiences of African American HIV/AIDS positive mothers. More specifically, the data i