South Africa is one of the most affected country by the HIV/AIDS epidemic worldwide. Literary responses gave voice to the impact and perception of HIV/AIDS epidemic. The present thesis is focused on the creative response to HIV/AIDS by a sample of three selected South African novels
Welcome to Our Hillbrow, Beauty’s Gift, and The Reactive. By using an interdisciplinary approach, the representation and the experience of HIV/AIDS, and the meanings associated to the disease as described in the novels are analysed. Welcome to Our Hillbrow presents the prejudice and myths around HIV/AIDS, Beauty’s Gift is focused on female empowerment against risky masculinity, and The Reactive is a coming-of-age novel offering an introspective insight into HIV-positive status. Written in different times between 2001 and 2014, and by black authors of different generations, the novels are inscribed in the socio-cultural context of South Africa. With this sample of selected fiction, it is possible to observe a complex scenario on HIV/AIDS and a shift in the focus on HIV/AIDS perception: from stigma and mortality, to activism and prevention, to the individual co-existence with a manageable chronic condition. The novels showed the nuances of the meanings associated to HIV/AIDS, and their specific relation to the socio-cultural determinants of the disease (stigma, misinformation, rural-urban relation, gender power structure, accessibility to treatment). The present work intends to contribute to the understanding of HIV/AIDS by the perspective of creative voices which have the ability to disclose meaning and signification to the experience of suffering due to the disease.