«My Proof Of Life»: HIV as Reification of Black Metaphysics in Danez Smith's Homie

Abstract

[eng] Since the onset of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, literature has responded to the 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.