"This book explores the meaning and practice of health in the lives of southern African American women and their adolescent daughters"--

Workable Sisterhood is an empirical look at sixteen HIV-positive women who have a history of drug use, conflict with the law, or a history of working in the sex trade. What makes their experience with the HIV/AIDS virus and their political participation different from their counterparts of people with HIV? Michele Tracy Berger argues that it is the influence of a phenomenon she labels "intersectional stigma," a complex process by which women of color, already experiencing race, class, and gender oppression, are also labeled, judged, and given inferior treatment because of their status as drug users, sex workers, and HIV-positive women. The work explores the barriers of stigma in relation to political participation, and demonstrates how stigma can be effectively challenged and redirected. The majority of the women in Berger's book are women of color, in particular African Americans and Latinas. The study elaborates the process by which these women have become conscious of their social position as HIV-positive and politically active as activists, advocates, or helpers. She builds a picture of community-based political participation that challenges popular, medical, and scholarly representations of "crack addicted prostitutes" and HIV-positive women as social problems or victims, rather than as agents of social change. Berger argues that the women's development of a political identity is directly related to a process called "life reconstruction." This process includes substance- abuse treatment, the recognition of gender as a salient factor in their lives, and the use of nontraditional political resources.

A comprehensive student guide for women’s and gender studies that will help undergraduates to critically assess their skills and knowledge, communicate effectively about the value of their degree and consider ways to apply their strengths "in the real world."

Inter sectionality, or the consideration of race, class, and gender, is one of the prominent contemporary theoretical contributions made by scholars in the field of women's studies that now broadly extends across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Taking stock of this transformative paradigm, The Intersectional Approach guide...

Female drug addicts are often stereotyped either as promiscuous, lazy, and selfish, or as weak, scared, and trapped into addiction. These depictions typify the "pathology and powerlessness" narrative that has historically characterized popular and academic conversations about female substance abusers. Neither Villain Nor Victim attempts to correct these polarizing perspectives by presenting a critical feminist analysis of the drug world. By shifting the discussion to one centered on women's agency and empowerment, this book reveals the complex experiences and social relationships of women addicts. Essays explore a range of topics, including the many ways that women negotiate the illicit drug world, how former drug addicts manage the more intimate aspects of their lives as they try to achieve abstinence, how women tend to use intervention resources more positively than their male counterparts, and how society can improve its response to female substance abusers by moving away from social controls (such as the criminalization of prostitution) and rehabilitative programs that have been shown to fail women in the long term. Advancing important new perspectives about the position of women in the drug world, this book is essential reading in courses on women and crime, feminist theory, and criminal justice.

Afrocentric Books presents the second installment in the Afromyth Fantasy Series. This anthology contains fourteen fantasy stories featuring characters of the African diaspora, stories that will take you from the American antebellum South, where an African god searches for his voice, to the far-flung future, where a caravan of ships makes harbor in a Saharan sea. Follow a young boy who, with the help of ancestral magic, learns what it truly means to be a warrior. Take a spirit journey as a young girl learns to be a goddess. Afromyth Volume 2 is an eclectic collection of tales whose fantasy themes run the gamut from romance to horror, including a story of a woman whose sanity is tested by her family's demons. Within these pages, a healer unlocks an ancient power, a woman rides the gods, and a god rides a bike. Explore new worlds through the eyes of characters of indigenous African descent.

A guide for social scientists who have developed a research design and are eager to start their first research project, only to discover that no one will talk to them. Political scientists and psychologists offer many access stories, through which they develop a general theory of access that recognizes it as a process of building relationships. They advise researchers to identify those who can help them gain access, learn the art of self-presentation, and nurture relationships once they are established.

"Doll Seed is a collection of speculative short fiction. The stories span horror, fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism, but are always grounded in very real characters and finely rendered, distinctive communities. Thematically linked often by the lives of women and girls, especially women of color and their experiences of vulnerability and outsider status, these stories are playful and provocative. A Black family in the 1970s Bronx plays host to an alien child. An aspiring jewelry artist is haunted by a fast food icon. A doll finds herself in 1950s America playing a key role in the Civil Rights Movement. A meat grinder appears in a magical forest and chaos ensues"--