Viral Voyages ― Tracing AIDS in Latin America

Viral Voyages: Tracing AIDS in Latin America is a unique book on the connection between AIDS, its literary representation, and the debates surrounding globalization in Latin America. This interdisciplinary study is a journey throughout Latin American 'HIV-Positive Writing' and its connection with topics such as national and gender identities, travel and displacement, locality and globality, and the disciplinary discourse on illness. By identifying a corpus of novels, short stories, urban chronicles, plays and autobiographical pieces written by mostly gay Latin American authors, Meruane argues that the literary representation of the diseased homosexual subject in Latin America contains a radical critique of the political, economic, and social erasure entailed in the notion of globality. With a gripping rhythm and incisive readings of some of the most prominent late twentieth century Latin American authors, this book is aimed to a broad readership.

Lina Meruane teaches Latin American cultures in New York University's Global/Liberal Studies Program, USA. She is a Chilean critic and a distinguished writer of fiction, author of the novels Postuma, Cercada, Fruta podrida and Sangre en el ojo, which was awarded the prestigious Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Prize (Mexico, 2012). She has also received the Anna Seghers Prize (Berlin, 2011) for her work in fiction and literary fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Viral Voyages was originally published in Spanish by Fondo de Cultura Economica (FCE Chile, 2012).