The Fire Inside: Women Protesting AIDS in Prison since 1980. Issue 1 (March 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Day, Emma
• Is Part Of: Modern American history. Volume 5:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 79
• Page End: 100
• Publication Date: 2022-03
• Subjects: Women -- Gender and Sexuality -- Health and Medicine -- Social Movements and Protest -- Surveillance and Incarceration; United States -- History -- 19th century -- Periodicals; United States -- History -- 20th century -- Periodicals; United States -- History -- 21st century -- Periodicals; 973.9005
• DOI: 10.1017/mah.2022.3
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2515-0456

Abstract

Abstract : In the late twentieth century, the American prison system expanded in ways that denied women, and especially working-class and women of color, adequate medical care with regard to HIV-AIDS and their reproductive, chronic, and other illnesses. The experience of living within a racist, misogynistic, and privatized prison system shaped women's organizing on the inside, inspiring forms of mutual aid among prisoners and compelling the formation of inside–outside alliances. Activists not only addressed HIV-AIDS, but also the absence of all the healthcare that incarcerated women failed to receive. Their efforts highlight the systemic and cyclical problems diverse groups of women have faced within the HIV-AIDS epidemic in the United States, as well as women's interpersonal, organizational, and legal efforts to overcome them.