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A review by half_book_and_co
The Sex Lives of African Women by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
5.0
The Sex Lives of African Women is exactly about what it states in its title. First starting out as a blog and now finally in book form, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah has spoken to women accross the continent and in the diaspora about their experiences. The stories she collected are now presented under three sub headlines: Self Discovery, Freedom, and Healing. Though as the stories the women tell are complex the assignment to a subsection is sometimes more straightforward than in other cases.
But in the end, that does not matter at all. Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is a wonderful curator. She puts together a collection of experiences which while surely not exhausting still covers such wide ground. She also does so without falling easily in the tokenizing trap: there are, for example, plenty of queer, lesbian, bi women and multiple trans women so none of their experiences has to stand in for "the queer experience" or "the trans experience". Of course, not all kinds of experiences (spanning polygamy and polyamory, recovering from sexual assault and domestic violence, finding joy and power in BDSM, short and long trails to self discovery, the impact of religion, and much more) are covered multiple times but you can feel the care taken putting this together. It is always very clear that a specific text is to represent this one woman and no more. But taken all together a fantastic mosaic is being built.
I also really enjoyed Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah's writing style. She manages to retain the voices of the different women while also just writing deeply engaging. A book you might want to start and dip in and put of but then find yourself turning page after page not being able to stop.
But in the end, that does not matter at all. Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is a wonderful curator. She puts together a collection of experiences which while surely not exhausting still covers such wide ground. She also does so without falling easily in the tokenizing trap: there are, for example, plenty of queer, lesbian, bi women and multiple trans women so none of their experiences has to stand in for "the queer experience" or "the trans experience". Of course, not all kinds of experiences (spanning polygamy and polyamory, recovering from sexual assault and domestic violence, finding joy and power in BDSM, short and long trails to self discovery, the impact of religion, and much more) are covered multiple times but you can feel the care taken putting this together. It is always very clear that a specific text is to represent this one woman and no more. But taken all together a fantastic mosaic is being built.
I also really enjoyed Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah's writing style. She manages to retain the voices of the different women while also just writing deeply engaging. A book you might want to start and dip in and put of but then find yourself turning page after page not being able to stop.