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Seeing firsthand the destruction the disease was inflicting on South Africa and hearing the stories of activists from China to Nairobi challenged McColly to place his own problems within a global framework, forcing him to contemplate the lives of HIV positive people without access to treatment, health care, and a supportive community. Through interviews with Buddhist monks in a remote Thai monastery, male sex workers in India, African-American preachers in Chicago, and Senegalese mullahs, McColly comes to a fuller understanding of how cultural attitudes toward death and dying, sexuality and gender, and morality and spirituality affect the life chances of people living with HIV/AIDS. 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