Drawing upon ethnographic research in Winnipeg, Manitoba, we complicate simplistic epidemiological and sexual health discourses that position African newcomer teen girls and young women as "at-risk" for HIV/AIDS and other consequences of being sexually active. By tracing the trajectories of sexual health messages and utilizing the concept of assemblage, we seek to account for the ways in which risk is actively made and negotiated in practice by African newcomer youth. By highlighting the perspectives and experiences of participants in relationship to Canadian literature on the subject of sexual risk, culture, and education, we work to counter essentializing, racializing, and pathologizing discourses.Attended largely by youth from various African backgrounds and organized by a settlement agency, a newcomer girls' group took place on a bi-weekly basis in a Winnipeg public high school. Ruta, a settlement worker, was training me to run some of the meetings. This helped me, a non-African anthropologist, to make connections with African newcomer youth for my ethnographic research on how sexual health messaging-and its gendered and racialized aspects-circulates within their social worlds. On this day, a sexual health educator, Lara, was giving a presentation.The classroom was decorated with colorful posters representing African countries. Ruta and I put out the sandwiches while chatting about the upcoming presentation. Students trickled in and found their seats. Lara arrived and introduced herself, then handed out a single piece of paper titled "Sexually Transmitted Infections Quiz." With the classroom teacher and I watching from the back, a series of exchanges unfolded between the settlement worker, the sex education educator, and the students, with Lara asking (and answering) most of the questions, addressing students' concerns, and correcting statements made by the teen girls that Lara deemed factually incorrect.Lara placed a clear emphasis on "how the girls really needed this," referring to biomedical and epidemiological information about sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies, the message to abstain or delay sexual activity, and risk-based knowledge about how sexual contact posed dangers to teen girls' sexual health. The Sexually Transmitted Infections Quiz on 8 × 11 papers acted as a visual reminder about the "correct" information they ought to know about their bodies. When a youth raised the question, "What is HIV?" Lara fired off statistics about infection and mortality rates, highlighting the importance of women taking control of their sexual health. Her answer portrayed sexual contact as a modality of contagion, sweeping aside desire, pleasure or notions of erotic intimacy that might otherwise make that sexual transmission of HIV fathomable. She stressed the need to be communicative with boyfriends about boundaries and sexual history and, if sexually active, to practice CONTACT Allison Odger aodger@yorku.ca 310-12 Passy Crescent, M3J 3L2 North York, Ontario. Color versions of one or more of t...

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