In observance of the National Asian and Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, Uniting America—a project of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), in partnership with Lambda Legal—organized an HIV Health Fair at the Vietnamese Association of Illinois May 18.
Event co-sponsors included AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, Howard Brown Health Center, Center on Halsted, Northside Community Resources, Asian Human Services, Emmaus Ministries, the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, the Social Security Administration and Invisible 2 Invincible, among others.
Attendees were able to get tested, participate in workshops and obtain educational materials.
During a forum, individuals from various organizations talked about the services they provide.
However, one of the most stirring talks was given by one attendee who talked about his own background. (He told Windy City Times he wished to remain anonymous, as there are some family members who do not know about him.)
"I actually defy all the stereotypes, I guess, of being Filipino-American, immigrant, Catholic. I'm openly HIV-positive, I'm queer and I'm very sex-positive. I encompass these elements that aren't spoken about in my own community and [others]. I'm also in a recovery for crystal-meth abuse, so I have all these elements that are so against my family's tradition."
Talking about his experiences of being HIV-positive, he said, "I guess what I'm trying to do is 'normalize' HIV and not talk about it in such a way that there's this 'otherness.' It's hard to normalize it in the Asian community. We need to be less silent.
"We need to talk more about sex and sexuality. Being someone who's really sex-positive, I think people in the Asian-American community ... need to talk more about sexuality. I went to a predominantly Asian-American high school in the suburbs of Chicago, but we discovered sex on our own. We had parents that we never talked about this with—and when you intersect that with drug abuse, it becomes pretty insane.
"There is this stereotype that Asian-Americans don't have sex, but I know a lot of Asian-Americans who are HIV-positive—[and] no one ever speaks about that. When I go to an event for African-Americans or Latinos, I don't hear my voice and that's really sad. When I think about someone who's 17 or 18—whether they're HIV-positive, queer, intersex or transgender—they don't have a voice, especially in Chicago, a city that's very segregated. You don't have that voice for queer Asian youth.
"What I'm trying to do is to figure out a way to get the community to talk on a daily basis about sexual health and HIV and drug abuse. It's about talking [to others] that changes the world. ... When you have this traditionalism and lack of dialogue, it creates this toxic environment. I don't have role models in their 40s or 50s to speak with. [However,] I'm at the point where I feel empowered as a human being."
After he spoke, Maher Alhaj of ICIRR and Lambda Legal said, "This is exactly why we're here—to try to communicate with each other to build those bridges. Hopefully, the Asian community will be more open-minded when it comes to HIV. If we keep saying someone else is going to do it, then no one's going to do it."
The Asian Health Coalition recently conducted a three-year comprehensive needs-assessment survey for three Asian immigrant communities (Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian) in the Chicagoland area. The results underscored the need for more HIV-related programming targeted at local Asian subgroups, as the low response rate—coupled with other factors—suggests the disease remains a source of embarrassment and fear for Asian immigrants.
