Read About Women's Lives

While you are currently experiencing I'm Still Surviving on a digital platform, since its inception, the project has relied on analog and in-person collaboration. We have shared space together to make things that represent the history of HIV/AIDS. One of the most beautiful products of this work, is the books the History Moves team has made for the women narrators. Click below on a title to preview or purchase copies of the books from blurb.

Brooklyn: "I'm a challenger"
Chicago: "I'm still surviving"
North Carolina: "I'm a warrior"

Brooklyn

Link to book

The Brooklyn described and pictured here is a complicated and contradictory place. With a long history of racial and economic segregation and waves of gentrifications, Brooklyn is now considered one of America’s hippest places. Most of the women who have shared their stories in the pages that follow have lived in Brooklyn all their lives, in neighborhoods like East New York, Bushwick, Brownsville, which have only recently begun to experience the beginnings of gentrification. A majority of residents in these neighborhoods are and have long been people of color. There is higher concentration of people living poverty there than in other parts of the city. The health implications of this structural inequality mean that certain zip codes hold the greatest concentration of people living with HIV/AIDS in Brooklyn.

Download the book as a PDF.

Print on demand available here.

+++++++++

Chicago

The Chicago you will see and hear in this exhibition is both a city of neighborhoods and one of the most racially segregated cities in the United States. It has long been a landing place for migrants: a central point in the Great Black Migration from south to north over the course of the 20th century, as well as the migrations of Mexican and Puerto Rican families and white Appalachians. While always a diverse city, Chicagoans have rarely experienced interracial connection. White Chicago residents were not encouraged to cross neighborhood lines, while Black and Latino residents were often kept from doing so by policies of redlining, disinvestment and policing. This bifurcated urban space structured the world that all the women interviewed, across race, grew up in.

Download the book as a PDF.
‍
Print on demand available here.

Link to book

+++++++++

North Carolina

The Piedmont and Eastern regions of North Carolina are at the center of this part of the project. The WIHS clinics are located in Raleigh and Durham, an area that is home to the nation’s largest research and development park (Research Triangle Park) and three major research universities – commonly referred to as the Triangle. The women represented here live both in urban centers and in smaller cities and towns within a 100-mile radius of the Triangle. Whether in bigger cities or small towns, most of the locations have long histories of racial segregation, especially in housing and employment. The women from outside the Triangle travel long distances to receive health care and connect with the WIHS. This is a function of less access to health care in rural areas. Over the last decade it has become harder and harder for poor women to receive the care they need. Meet the women from North Carolina below.

Download the book as a PDF.
‍
Print on demand available here.