Review by Choice Review
The individual chapters of this epidemiological travelogue of Southeast Asia are so well written they read like "New Yorker" essays. The book opens with descriptions, replete with evocative cultural detail, of the many faces of the AIDS epidemic in six Southeast Asian countries plus China's Yunnan province. For each, Beyrer places the epidemic in its historical, cultural, political, and behavioral context, comparing, for example, the relative success of newly prosperous Thailand in stemming the spread of AIDS with the public health disasters in Burma and Cambodia. Topical chapters on the implications of cultural phenomena such as prostitution, heroin use, and transsexuality follow. Among the most interesting and informative chapters are those on Southeast Asian women (whose greatest risk factor may be marriage) and tribes (Indochina's ethnic minorities are especially vulnerable because of heavy recruitment into the Thai sex industry). The last section reviews the ethical implications of viewing AIDS only as a health rather than a social problem. Throughout, the author is highly critical of moralistic, conservative ("Puritan") views of sexual behavior, insisting that society must focus on actual behaviors surrounding commercial sex and illegal drug use, for example, rather than cultural ideals. Upper-division undergraduates and above. M. A. Gwynne SUNY at Stony Brook
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
