The concept for this book came about following the publication of the volume Health Issues Confronting Minority Men Who Have Sex with Men, published by Springer in 2008. Consistent with its title, that work focused on speci?c health issues identi?ed by communities, researchers, and AIDS service providers that were and continue to be of concern . During the preparation of that volume, I received numerous telephone calls and e-mails from women in various parts of the country, asking why a book was not also being developed to address their often-neglected concerns. Accordingly,thetopicsaddressedinIdentitiesandSexualitiesofMinorityWomen were developed based on input from minority women who participated in focus groups conducted in diverse regions of the United States. These focus groups were held speci?cally to provide an opportunity for sexual minority women in minority communities to identify those issues that from their perspective are most salient and relevant to their lives. It is notsurprising, in view of the variation in process by which the topics were identi?ed, as well as the differences in perspective as- ciated with differences in sex and gender, that this resulting compilation of topics departs substantially from the focus of the companion text addressing health issues of minority men who have sex with men.
