“Work What You Got”: Political Participation and hiv -Positive Black Women’s Work to Restore Themselves and Their Communities

Abstract

hiv -positive Black women’s activism has been understudied, and input from the community in crisis has infrequently been deemed as valuable to public health officials in hiv/aids prevention and interventions. Through the narratives of thirty hiv -positive Floridian Black women, there were three emergent themes of political participation: 1) face-to-face activism 2) activist mothering, and 3) publically coming out as women living with hiv/aids . Results indicate that publically coming out as women living with hiv/aids may be a new activist strategy that can be added to the literature on Black women’s community-based political participation.