November 20, 1996 Contact: Jennifer McNulty (408) 459-2495; mcnulty@ua.ucsc.edu

CARTER WILSON HONORED BY ANTHROPOLOGISTS FOR HIS BOOK ABOUT AIDS IN MEXICO

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Carter Wilson, a professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has won the 1996 Ruth Benedict Prize for his book Hidden in the Blood: A Personal Investigation of AIDS in the Yucatan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).

The prize recognizes the best monograph on a gay or lesbian theme and is given annually by the Society of Gay and Lesbian Anthropologists at its meeting during the convention of the American Anthropological Association, which is being held this year in San Francisco November 20-24. Wilson shares this year's award with William Leap, author of Gay Men's English.

Hidden in the Blood explores the daily lives of staff and patients at a medical clinic that treats HIV-positive people in southeastern Mexico. Readers come to know patients from a wide range of backgrounds--middle-aged fathers, married couples, transvestites, truck drivers, folklore dancers, and a young woman infected by a blood transfusion during plastic surgery.

The book also tells the stories of still-closeted homosexual men worried about their survival and privacy, a conservative hematologist who mounted the first AIDS research effort in the Yucatan peninsula, and the young men and women the crisis has moved to become activists.

Wilson has taught at UCSC since 1972. His other books include the novels Crazy February, Treasures on Earth, A Green Tree and a Dry Tree: A Novel of Chiapas, and a collection of ethnographic stories for children, On Firm Ice. Wilson worked as a writer on two Oscar-winning films, The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads.

Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) was a professor of anthropology at Columbia University, one of a famous triumvirate that also included anthropologists Ruth Bunzel and Margaret Mead.

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