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A review by ruxandra_grr
The Sex Lives of African Women by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
I don't know exactly what to rate this. It was an engaging, at times difficult read (it has alllll of the content warnings, including SA, CSA and so on). It features a wide range of women of all sexual orientations, cis and trans, monogamous or non-monogamous, kinky or vanilla, quite a few sex workers and activists, a lot of different social backgrounds and countries of origin and a lot of perspectives on sex and intimacy and relationships.
The stories are non-fiction - condensed interviews with the questions removed - so sometimes they have fascinating structures and turns: a woman might be talking about a specific lover for a while and then casually start talking about their husband they were with at the same time (I say that in a non-judgmental way). They are not meant to be exhaustive sexual histories, just episodes grouped under three big themes: self-discovery, freedom and healing, though at times those themes feel interchangeable to a degree. So there definitely is an editing eye there.
That's why I was shocked and felt uncomfortable when one of the stories, 'Baaba', features something described as a 'threesome', but can be nothing else than SA that the woman telling the story and her boyfriend at the time (who was, admittedly very abusive and controlling)) perpetrated on one of her friends (who was drunk and sleeping so she could not possibly had consented) and it was not addressed at all. Since it was an interview, the author could have asked follow up questions about that, but there was nothing, it felt brushed off (that woman was also casually fatphobic and there was at least another instance of that).
The stories are non-fiction - condensed interviews with the questions removed - so sometimes they have fascinating structures and turns: a woman might be talking about a specific lover for a while and then casually start talking about their husband they were with at the same time (I say that in a non-judgmental way). They are not meant to be exhaustive sexual histories, just episodes grouped under three big themes: self-discovery, freedom and healing, though at times those themes feel interchangeable to a degree. So there definitely is an editing eye there.
That's why I was shocked and felt uncomfortable when one of the stories, 'Baaba', features something described as a 'threesome', but can be nothing else than SA that the woman telling the story and her boyfriend at the time (who was, admittedly very abusive and controlling)) perpetrated on one of her friends (who was drunk and sleeping so she could not possibly had consented) and it was not addressed at all. Since it was an interview, the author could have asked follow up questions about that, but there was nothing, it felt brushed off (that woman was also casually fatphobic and there was at least another instance of that).