Table of Contents

Preface to the 2006 Edition Preface to the First Edition Introduction Part I: Misfortunes without Number 2 The Water Refugees 3 The Remembered Valley 4 The Alexis Advantage: The Retaking of Kay 5 The Struggle for Health 6 1986 and After: Narrative Truth and Political Change Part II: AIDS Comes to a Haitian Village 7 Manno 8 Anita 9 Dieudonne 10 "A Place Ravaged by AIDS" Part III: The Exotic and the Mundane: HIV in Haiti 11 A Chronology of the AIDS/HIV Epidemic in Haiti 12 HIV in Haiti: The Dimensions of the Problem 13 Haiti and the "Accepted Risk Factors" 14 AIDS in the Caribbean: The "West Atlantic Pandemic" Part IV: AIDS, History, Political Economy 15 Many Masters: The European Domination of Haiti 16 The Nineteenth Century: One Hundred Years of Solitude 17 The United States and the People with History Part V: AIDS and Accusation 18 AIDS and Sorcery: Accusation in the Village 19 AIDS and Racism: Accusation in the Center 20 AIDS and Empire: Accusation in the Periphery 21 Blame, Cause, Etiology, and Accusation 22 Conclusion: AIDS and an Anthropology of Suffering Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author

Paul Farmer, the Presley Professor at Harvard Medical School, is founding director of Partners In Health and Chief of the Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. Among his books are Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California, 2003).

Reviews

Physician and anthropologist Farmer studied the impact of AIDS on the impoverished people of Haiti, and his portrayal for his doctoral dissertation, of a small rural village--its clinic, religious life, folk healers, and voodoo beliefs--brings Haitian culture powerfully to life. He provides an extensive history of the country, finally exploring the connection between suffering and blame: Americans have blamed Haitians for ``causing'' AIDS, while Haitians have accused one another of ``sending'' it through sorcery. Rarely is a book based on a dissertation so engaging. Highly recommended for academic and subject collections.-- Judith Eannarino, Washington, D.C.

"Farmer's sensitive exploration of the lives and deaths of the people at [the village of] Do Kay give his study a distinctly human face and an emotional edge.... The book is at the same time fiercely personal and coldly objective. The result is both moving and illuminating." - Science "Farmer renders a richly layered and nuanced ethnographic portrait." - Harvard Educational Review "This superbly crafted volume is dedicated to explaining and refuting a popular U.S. belief that AIDS came to the United States from Haiti.... Farmer has made an outstanding scholarly contribution to the 'anthropology of suffering,' the assessment of illness as perceived and experienced by a patient embedded in an interlocking fabric of culture and history." - Medical Anthropology Quarterly"