Chyrell Bellamy

Chyrell D. Bellamy (Bellamy-Sarr) has been an educator, advocate and activist in the AIDS field since 1987, specifically on behalf of women and people of color. She has collaborated on various projects with Imani Harrington for the last five years. Ms. Bellamy was an assistant director for the New Jersey Women and AIDS Network. She has studied and written articles about prevention and treatment issues of women living with HIV and understanding experiences of recovery from psychiatric illness.

BOOK

Positive/Negative

Women of Color and HIV/AIDS

Edited by Imani Harrington and Chyrell Bellamy

Foreword by Evelyn C. White

This collection of 20 plays creatively explores the HIV/AIDS crisis, especially as women of color in the United States experience it. Positive/Negative looks at both individual and community issues, ranging from deeply personal reckonings with grief and anger to the broader institutional problems of homophobia, racism, sexism, poverty, and access to health care.

PRAISE FOR POSITIVE/NEGATIVE

Those who are guided to this book will find in it affirmation, provocation, enlightenment, laughter and much love. Embrace its offerings as if your life depended on it, because it does.

—Evelyn C. White

I think Postive/Negative: Women of Color and HIV/AIDS will prove to be one of the most important books of the decade on HIV/AIDS and art. These are the voices we’ve been waiting for, the side of the story we have not heard. This is political, this is art at its absolute most courageous, this is beyond the cutting edge. This collection takes you to the other side; it tells us what we have been wanting, needing, and afraid to know. Imani Harrington and Chyrell D. Bellamy have put together an amazing and magnificent book. We should applaud their courage.

—Sapphire

This collection of plays explores the central problems faced by women of color with HIV/AIDS. A wonderful book…original and provocative.

—Roya Sakhai, Ph.D.