Tricking and Tripping: Prostitution in the Era of AIDS: By Claire E. Sterk, Social Change Press, New York, 2000, 178 pp., $17.95.

Arch Sex Behav (2007) 36:871872 DOI 10.1007/s10508-007-9250-8

BOOK REVIEW

Tricking and Tripping: Prostitution in the Era of AIDS

By Claire E. Sterk, Social Change Press, New York, 2000, 178 pp., $17.95.

Emily van der Meulen

Published online: 17 November 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

While much of Sterks research is now dated, her text still manages to illuminate us, at times, through her in-depth study of 180 New York City and Atlanta metropolitan area women engaged in prostitution. Over a 10-year period, Sterk interviewed, studied, observed, and became friends with these women, their partners, and even some of their customers.

Sterk is a formidable force in the study of prostitution and HIV, with a focus on crack cocaine use. As associate dean for research in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, and with a background of nursing in her native Nederlands, Sterks anthropological ethnology is rich with her own lived experience as well as the experiences of the women she interviewed. She attempts to present the complicated and troubling stories of one of Americas most impoverished groups of women with empathy and solidarity. In her own words: In this book, I present prostitution from the point of view of the women themselves... (p. 3).

Compiled between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, Sterk was in contact with street prostitutes from the lower echelons of the business. Ranging in age from 18 to 59 years, half of the women were African American, 30% white, and 20% Latino. Sterk confesses to the potential impact of her racial and socioeconomic privilege. She writes: My background, so different from that of these women, most likely affected the nature of the interviews.... While I dont know to what extent these differences played a...