Tryin’ to Scrub that “Death Pussy” Clean Again: The Pleasures of Domesticating HIV/AIDS in Pearl Cleage’s Fiction.

WHAT Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (Book); CLEAGE, Pearl, 1948-; AFRICAN American literature -- History & criticism; AFRICAN Americans in literature; HIV-positive persons in literature; AIDS in literature

Examining Pearl Cleage's What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (1997), I read through pleasure and politics to explore how HIV/AIDS enters into the lives of black heterosexual women in narrative discourse. Threading disability studies and black "quare" theory, I investigate the pleasures of domesticating and converting the "threatening" poz character—integrating a perceived threat back into the social order as a mouthpiece for heterosexual, able-bodied normality. Because this domestication is not narratively casual or politically neutral, I highlight the investments, benefits, pleasures, and dangers of these narratives and discuss how they impact our understandings of blackness and disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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