Introduction: Scandalous Stories of HIV Prevention Free
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Published:April 2025
Scandalous storytelling is an everyday narrative practice shared among gay and transgender communities in urban Amazonian Peru that emphasizes exaggeration and embellishment. Though scandalousness was sometimes experienced negatively, to scandalize was also to transgress social norms and expectations and to render the mundane spectacular. The scandalous stories explored in this book chronicle the new impasses, predicaments, and contradictions gay and transgender Peruvians experienced during the 2010s as the subjects of efforts to “end AIDS.” The introduction synthesizes key interventions; covers the sexual, gender, and ethno-racial categorical schemas interlocutors encountered; contextualizes Peru’s response to HIV/AIDS; situates the research within the broader anthropology of HIV/AIDS; describes intersubjective ethnographic methods; and offers a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book.