Polygamy in Senegal, lesbian hookups in Cairo: inside intercourse everyday lives of African people

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah. Image: Nana Kofi Acquah/The Guardian

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s brand new book The Sex life of African Women examines self-discovery, freedom and healing. She talks about everything she’s learned

N ana Darkoa Sekyiamah has actually a face that grins at rest. When she’s speaking, it really is with a consistent grin

one that only falters when she talks about some of the difficult circumstances she and other African women have gone through in their quest for sexual liberation. She talks for me from the woman residence city of Accra, Ghana, in which she claims “no a person is amazed” that she’s got created a novel about intercourse. As a blogger, creator and self-described “positive gender evangelist”, this lady has come accumulating and recording the intimate experiences of African females for over ten years. Their brand-new book, The gender resides of African girls, try an anthology of confessional reports from across the African region while the diaspora. The stories is sorted into three parts: self-discovery, independence and recovery. Each “sex lifetime” are advised for the subject’s very own words. The result is a manuscript which takes your reader in to the beds of polygamous marriages in Senegal, to furtive lesbian hookups in commodes in Cairo and polyamorous clubs in the usa, but without having any sensationalism or essentialism. The woman ambition, in publication such as existence, was “to produce more space” for African girls “to has open and sincere conversations about intercourse and sexuality”.

Sekyiamah grew up in London to Ghanaian mothers in a polygamous union, but spent my youth in Ghana. The woman formative many years in Accra had been under a patriarchal, traditional, Catholic regime that ingrained inside her a fear of gender and all the potential risks – maternity, shame, becoming a “fallen” woman. “from the once my years performedn’t descend,” she recalls. “I happened to be in Catholic college at that time, and I would visit the convent everyday and pray, because I thought that intended I became pregnant.” From the moment she reached adolescence she was actually informed: “Now you’ve got their duration, you’re a female, your can’t try to let dudes contact your. That was constantly in my own head.” Later, she is told: “If you set their relationship not one person otherwise is going to would like you. When You Have a young child as a single girl guys are probably contemplate you simply as a sexual object and never a prospective partner.” The lady mother would only chat to their about intercourse in preventive ways. “The concept of messing with boys ended up being very terrifying to me. It stored me a virgin consistently and decades.”

Inside her belated kids , Sekyiamah gone to live in great britain to learn and started checking out feminist literature.

She realized simply how much all those things terror ended the girl, and various other lady, from owning their health, her pleasures and, by extension, from “taking upwards their particular devote the world”. She relocated back into Ghana and, in 2009, co-founded a blog, escapades through the rooms of African Females. “we began discussing my personal personal reports, my own encounters, and encouraging more female to fairly share unique tales. So the weblog became a collective room for African female, whether or not they are within the region or perhaps in the diaspora, to just envision aloud, express experience, to educate yourself on from just one another.” The blog was actually a winner, and was deluged with submissions from African girl discussing their stories of really love and pornography. It claimed prestigious awards in Ghana and made Sekyiamah and her co-founder, Malaka Grant, international acceptance. But after a few years, she begun to would you like to see, and compose, things lengthier. She realized that “people don’t know concerning the fact of African women’s experiences with regards to gender and sexuality. I believe like men usually contemplate African females as repressed or constantly pregnant or they don’t need hygienic bathroom towels or they’ve become cut [genitally mutilated]. I found myself understanding the breadth of your activities through writings, and so I thought: ‘I want to write a book concerning the activities of African women.’”