Does the scientific "theory" that HIV came to North America from Haiti stem from underlying attitudes of racism and ethnocentrism in the United States rather than from hard evidence? Addressing the question, this is an ethnographic study of AIDS in a poor society.

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

Praise for the first edition:

“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