The Roots of African American AIDS Activism: On Dan Royles’s “To Make the Wounded Whole”
Dan Royles
THE FINAL CHAPTER of
To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle Against HIV/AIDS, a new book by the historian Dan Royles, tells the story of SisterLove, a collective founded in 1989 by the esteemed activist Dázon Dixon Diallo. At its founding and in the years since SisterLove addressed the need for a movement specifically focused on Black women’s health. Based in the South, SisterLove acknowledged and addressed the pressures, prejudices, blockades, and biases experienced by Black women in the areas of sexuality, health care, and human rights. The organization took a global view of health issues, acknowledging disparities between countries and regions alongside those among race, gender, and class. SisterLove aimed its efforts toward “women who had been marginalized, including sex workers, incarcerated women, and women on welfare,” Royles explains, addi