Broidering the Threads of Memory: Writing and HIV/AIDS

Abstract

Introduction: Drawing on Pedro Lemebel’s metaphor of embroidery, this study analyzes writing as a survival strategy for preserving memory during the HIV/AIDS crisis. It examines how the intimate experience of illness is transformed into a collective gesture of political and ethical resistance against the institutional silencing of HIV-related deaths in Latin American and Caribbean contexts. Materials and Methods: A qualitative literary analysis was conducted on a corpus of three foundational works: Mi hermano (1996) by Jamaica Kincaid, Loco afán. Crónicas de sidario (1996) by Pedro Lemebel, and El desbarrancadero (2001) by Fernando Vallejo. The inquiry mapped layers of memory —personal, familial, communal, and national— by categorizing narrative techniques into three poetic devices: ‘basting stitches of memory’ —recollection—, ‘stitches of memory’ —photographic and nominal archiving—, and the ‘reverses of memory’ —fragmentation and silences—. Results: The texts operate as a retrospective embroidery that retrieves marginalized lives and translates private grief into collective resistance. The findings indicate that the recollection of the past is shaped by the presence of AIDS, the use of photographs as a mode of archiving, and the employment of proper names and nicknames as a strategy to safeguard memory and denounce the heteronormative structures of Antigua, Chile, and Colombia. Furthermore, narrative fragmentation reflects both the somatic discontinuity of the virus and the impossibility of constructing a monolithic memory for those who died from AIDS. Discussion: These results align with Paul Ricoeur’s framework on the triple attribution of memory —to oneself, to close ones, and to others— and Élisabeth Lebovici’s concept of the multiple self as a “coalition of subjectivities” within AIDS artivism. By transitioning from the singular to the collective, HIV-positive writing shifts intimate mourning into an intervention in the public sphere. Conclusions: Writing, conceived as embroidery, constitutes a space of ethical responsibility that enables narrator-witnesses of virus-related deaths to articulate an alternative discourse challenging the power structures within the represented contexts. In this way, individual loss is transformed into an act of shared memory that rescues subjects marginalized by illness and social exclusion from oblivion.