The Brooklyn described and pictured here is a complicated and contradictory place. With a long history of racial and economic segregation and waves of gentrifications, Brooklyn is now considered one of America’s hippest places. Most of the women who have shared their stories in the pages that follow have lived in Brooklyn all their lives, in neighborhoods like East New York, Bushwick, Brownsville, which have only recently begun to experience the beginnings of gentrification. A majority of residents in these neighborhoods are and have long been people of color. There is higher concentration of people living poverty there than in other parts of the city. The health implications of this structural inequality mean that certain zip codes hold the greatest concentration of people living with HIV/AIDS in Brooklyn.