Folklore, Gender, and AIDS in Malawi: No Secret under the Sun

Folklore, Gender, and AIDS in Malawi: No Secret Under the Sun. By Anika Wilson. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. xi + 190, acknowledgments, introduction, notes, references, index. $95.00 hardcover, $95.00 ebook.)The subtitle of Anika Wilson's complex and important work Folklore, Gender, and AIDS in Malawi is No Secret Under the Sun. This proverb alluding to the inescapably penetrative gaze of women's informal conversation is both straightforward and ironic: Wilson's attempt to grapple with conduits of information and practical example in everyday discourse of Malawian women facing the threat of AIDS suggests that the most personal intimate information of others becomes a shared resource when one's health is at stake.A publication in Palgrave's series "Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora," the work is based on Wilson's Ph.D. dissertation for University of Pennsylvania, but it successfully avoids the usual pitfalls of thesis adaptation. The writing is clear, often engaging, and undeniably passionate. Her argument is based on data gathered through conventional fieldwork interviews undertaken with a Malawian research assistant, as well as journals maintained by trained native observers who documented conversations relevant to health, marriage, sexual relations, and the AIDS crisis on a day to day basis. First developed as a tool in the grant-funded investigations sponsored by the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project, and later adapted for Wilson's particular research concerns, these journals represent a fascinating qualitative approach to ethnography of a sensitive topic. While fully aware of the potential problems posed by the journals, she makes splendid use of the emic perspective they provide.A small nation in southeast Africa, Malawi's population of approximately 15 million (2013) has been profoundly affected by AIDS. At the time of this book's publication, some 10% of adults between the ages of 15 and 49 were HIV-infected. Much of the international attention to the epidemic has focused on the perceived vulnerability of wives, mothers, and sex workers to infection from promiscuous male partners. Wilson notes that the official interventions have emphasized bringing about change in women's behaviors, without reference to the social context in which these behaviors exist.Without contesting the social vulnerability of these women, Wilson argues strongly that traditional forms of discourse offer a powerful and often overlooked tool of resistance developed among them: the sharing of informal narrative ("gossip" would be the dismissive label) that provides support and example in altering the behavior of the threatening "others"-the wandering husbands and their wayward girlfriends who represent a dangerous source of infection. …