The Life and Death of Ryan White : AIDS and Inequality in America / Paul M. Renfro.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Renfro, Paul M., 1987- author.

Series:

Gender & American culture.

Gender and American Culture Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

AIDS (Disease)--Patients--United States--Biography.

AIDS (Disease).

White, Ryan.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (214 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

University of North Carolina Press 2024

Chapel Hill, NC : The University of North Carolina Press, [2024]

Summary:

In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan White emerged as the face of the epidemic. Diagnosed with hemophilia at birth, Ryan contracted HIV through contaminated blood products. In 1985, he became a household name after he was barred from attending his Indiana middle school. As Ryan appeared on nightly news broadcasts and graced the covers of popular magazines, he was embraced by music icons and well-known athletes, achieving a curious kind of stardom. Analyzing his struggle and celebrity, Paul M. Renfro's powerful biography grapples with the contested meanings of Ryan's life, death, and afterlives. As Renfro argues, Ryan's fight to attend school forced the American public to reckon with prevailing misconceptions about the AIDS epidemic. Yet his story also reinforced the hierarchies at the heart of the AIDS crisis. Because the "innocent" Ryan had contracted HIV "through no fault of his own, " as many put it, his story was sometimes used to blame presumably "guilty" populations for spreading the virus. Reexamining Ryan's story through this lens, Renfro reveals how the consequences of this stigma continue to pervade policy and cultural understandings of HIV/AIDS today.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

List of Illustrations

Abbreviations

A Note on Terminology

Introduction

1. Blood and Blame

2. Normal Activities

3. AIDS Victim Now a Celebrity

4. The "Country Hicks" of Kokomo

5. The Funeral

6. In Ryan's Name

7. Whose CARE?

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Chronology

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781469680842

146968084X

9781469680880

1469680882

9781469680897

1469680890