“My Proof of Life”: HIV as Reification of Black Metaphysics in Danez Smith’s Homie

Abstract

Since its onset in the 1980s, literature has responded to the HIV/AIDS pandemic with works that testify to the devastating loss imposed on millions of people worldwide. After the implementation of effective antiretroviral treatment (ART) in the mid-90s, however, contemporary experiences of HIV might be expected to diverge their attention from grief and mourning to more “positive” emotions. The aim of this paper is to consider such a potential paradigm shift among new generations of HIV+ people with access to ART. To do so, it explores Danez Smith’s lyric approach to a 21st-century racialized experience of HIV, attempting to read it as constructive rather than destructive, without leaving intersectionality aside, in light of both Afropessimism and Queer Optimism.

Keywords

• Danez Smith | VIH/SIDA | Optimismo queer | Afropesimismo | Poesía del siglo XXI