Because she cares: Re-membering, re-finding, and poetically retelling narratives of HIV caring work with, for and by African women living with HIV

Abstract

Research on employment in Canadian AIDS service and allied organizations (AASOs) should recognize the unique experiences of immigrant women workers of African descent given their transnational HIV histories, working roles, relationship and responsibilities, interconnected identities and senses of belonging, and intersecting systems of oppressions they navigate within their working lives. Guided by decolonizing, anti-colonial, and transnational feminist thoughts, the Because She Cares study aims to understand the experiences of African women living with HIV who are employed in the HIV sector in the province of Ontario, Canada. Using performance narrative methodologies, this inquiry explored HIV-related work as agential, cultural and social practices of caring work; and deciphered the local and transnational interconnections to African women’s sensemaking of their work as HIV caring work. Ten African women with employment histories in Canadian AASOs participated as the Narrators. Using performance narrative methods based on oral traditions, I gathered, interpret and shared their stories of HIV caring work. In collaboration with the Narrators, I poetically “retold” interview narratives to embody the emotive resonance of the original telling and evoke the theoretical and political relevance of the sharing. Study findings illuminate the multiple self, communal and social modes of caring that emerged in women’s HIV-related work, the shifting responsibilization of African women living with HIV as carers, the intersecting systems of oppression African woman navigate in Canadian work spaces and strategies of care-full work that translocates “back home”. This study documents work experiences of African women whose HIV-related engagement is notable yet, typically overlooked in Canadian research on HIV-related employment and civic engagement. Decolonizing, anti-colonial, and transnational feminist thinking allowed me to use culturally responsive methodologies that highlight how HIV caring work becomes processes of identity and belonging, and its corresponding rights and responsibilities, within and across local and transnational contexts.