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The harrowing exigencies which follow the diagnosis of HIV/AIDS are an enormous
challenge PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS) have to confront. Though the recent
pharmacological advances prolong the life of PLWHA, the awareness of their mortality,
coupled with the stigmatized HIV/AIDS identity, prevents PLWHA from accepting the
diagnosis, forcing them to live with the disease. Marvelyn S Brown, in her memoir,
The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive (2008), offers one possible
remedy to overcome this vexed position. Coauthored with Courtney E Martin, Brown’s
memoir concerns the trauma that Brown confronts as an HIV-positive patient and her
eventual conciliation with HIV/AIDS through “self-love, self-respect, and responsibility.”
Akin perhaps to Arthur Frank’s notion of a “quest narrative,” in which the patient
reframes illness as a self-challenge, the memoir documents Brown’s positive self-transformation,
occasioned by her HIV-positive status. Taking these as cues, the present study,
through a close reading of The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive,
investigates how Brown, by distancing herself from the totalizing myths of AIDS,
such as AIDS = death and sin, among others, self-fashions herself through self-love,
self-respect, and responsibility. In so doing, the memoir remains a testament to
her sheer will to morally triumph over the disease even in the face of death.
HIV is a noun, not an adjective. It does not describe or define who you are. You
were somebody before HIV, and you are somebody now. Your character did not change;
your awareness of your health status did.
–Marvelyn Brown1 |
