This essay will discuss care ethics in Rebecca Brown's novel The Gifts of theBody and Mark Doty's Heaven's Coast: a memoir. One of the ways in whichresistant AIDS narratives can oppose dominant moralistic and stigmatisingrepresentations of people with AIDS is by foregrounding various alternativeforms of ethics, such as the construction of mutual care as a 'gift' that ispassed on amongst friends, lovers, families, and wider PWA communities. Iwill argue, moreover, that the practical and emotional support that communitiesand individuals provide to PWAs is frequently extended to a literary form ofcare, which memorialises and bears witness to names, stories, and deaths. TheGifts and Heaven's Coast reveal and even advocate an ethics of care withoutportraying an idealized view of care or representing it as an innate ability.
