Paper short abstract:

This paper examines Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s emerging voice in literary and feminist scenes and proposes an analysis of her story collection The Sex Lives of African Women (2021), discussing sexual freedom, afroqueerness and lesbianism as "subversive" practices of contestation and resistance.

Paper long abstract:

In her anthology, The Sex Lives of African Women (2021), Ghanaian writer and blogger Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah chronicles thirty-two stories of Black African and Afro-descendant women of different ages and sexual orientations to openly discuss queer and identity issues, family and religious dynamics, sexual freedom and pleasure, and abuses and resistance against heteropatriarchal structures.

In this paper, I will first examine Sekyiamah’s emerging voice in literary and feminist scenes. Sekyiamah is a feminist, writer, storyteller, blogger, journalist, Director of Communications at the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), and a member of the Black Feminism Forum Working Group. Inspired by feminists such as Ama Ata Aidoo, Maya Angelou, and Pregs Govender, Sekyiamah uses social media and her blog to support the rights of straight, lesbian, bisexual and transgender African women.

Second, I will propose an analysis of her story collection. I will draw on Sara Ahmed’s concept of “willfulness” (2014; 2017) to examine women’s agency while affirming their “dissenting” identities and facing the restrictions they are exposed to in environments still reluctant to accept alternative gender and sexual manifestations. I will discuss afroqueerness and lesbianism as "subversive" practices of contestation and resistance against heteronormativity and gender oppression (Zabus 2013; Ossome 2013) and “anti-colonial tools” against imperialist power structures and patriarchal opposition in Africa and across the diaspora.