AIDS Narratives: Gender and Sexuality, Fiction and Science(Gender and Genre in Literature)

This is the first book-length study of the rich fiction that has emerged from the AIDS crisis. Examining first the ways in which scientific discourse on AIDS has reflected ideologies of gender and sexuality-such as the construction of AIDS as a disease of gay men, part of a battle over masculinity, and thus largely excluding women with AIDS from public attention-the book considers how such discourses have shaped narrative understandings of AIDS. On the one hand, AIDS is seen as an invariably fatal weakening of an individual's bodily defenses, a depiction often used to reconfirm an identification between disease and a weak and vulnerable gayness. On the other hand, AIDS is understood in terms of an epidemic attributable to gay immorality or unnaturalness. The fiction of AIDS depends upon these two narratives, with one major subgenre of AIDS novel presenting narratives of personal illness, decline, and death, and a second focusing on epidemic spread. These novels also question the narrative structures upon which they depend, intervening particularly against the homophobia of those structures, though also sometimes reinforcing it.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Is a Virus Language?; Chapter 2 AIDS and the Battlefields of Masculinity; Chapter 3 The Narratives of AIDS; Chapter 4 Gay and Other Subjects of AIDS; Chapter 5 John Weir's The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket; Chapter 6 Apocalyptic Conspiracies:The “Epidemiological Narrative” of AIDS; Chapter 7 “But Then What?”: Sarah Schulman's People in Trouble; Appendix Bibliography of AIDS Literature; Works Cited; INDEX;

Review :
"In this comprehensive and provocative work, Dr. Kruger first looks at how the scientific research community talks about AIDS, exposing a preconstructed narrative of sexist and homophobic thinking; he then explores how AIDS lives in contemporary novels, focusing on the power of the writer's imagination to tell another story, a story that forces us to see the limitations of our society's response to AIDS and the people that live with it. This book is marked by a passionate caring for how writers can make us think and feel anew, how their creative visions can move us away from predictable metaphors to texts that call us to action because they are complex, funny, challenging, and relentless. This book is an excellent academic study of literary texts; it is also a living engaged work that stays with the reader. We are all part of the narrative of AIDS." -- Joan Nestle, Co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, Inc. "An important contribution to the growing field of AIDS cultural criticism. Kruger's astute analysis covers an impressive range of materials from biomedical discourse to queer fiction...stands out as a model of the new scholarship in queer studies." -- Professor David Rom n, Department of English, University of Southern California "Kruger's book is an important contribution to public discussions of the culture of AIDS and HIV, covering a broad body of literature thathas had the unenviable task of chronicling a pandemic." -- Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review "...superb, balanced, well-written work...It is a fine addition..." -- Choice