Knowing women : same-sex intimacy, gender, and identity in postcolonial Ghana

Author(s)

    • Dankwa, Serena Owusua

Bibliographic Information

Knowing women : same-sex intimacy, gender, and identity in postcolonial Ghana

Serena Owusua Dankwa

(African identities : past and present)

Cambridge University Press, 2022, c2021

  • : pbk

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 280-302) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Knowing Women is a study of same-sex desire in West Africa, which explores the lives and friendships of working-class women in southern Ghana who are intimately involved with each other. Based on in-depth research of the life histories of women in the region, Serena O. Dankwa highlights the vibrancy of everyday same-sex intimacies that have not been captured in a globally pervasive language of sexual identity. Paying close attention to the women's practices of self-reference, Dankwa refers to them as 'knowing women' in a way that both distinguishes them from, and relates them to categories such as lesbian or supi, a Ghanaian term for female friend. In doing so, this study is not only a significant contribution to the field of global queer studies in which both women and Africa have been underrepresented, but a starting point to further theorize the relation between gender, kinship, and sexuality that is key to queer, feminist, and postcolonial theories. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Table of Contents

  • Prologue: arrival stories
  • Introduction: freeing our imaginations
  • 1. Tacit erotic intimacies and the politics of indirection
  • 2. Supi, secrecy, and the gift of knowing
  • 3. 'The one who first says 'I love you'': obaa barima, gender, and erotic subjectivity
  • 4. Sugar motherhood and the collectivization of love
  • 5. 'Doing everything together': siblinghood, lovership, incest, family
  • Conclusion a fabric that never goes out of fashion
  • Bibliography.

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