The Sex Lives of African Women: Self-Discovery, Freedom, and Healing by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah

 

Hello my lovely readers!

I'm back again with another book to review....and yikes.

“I spent years avoiding sex with guys because I didn’t want anyone to gossip about me. I wish I had realized sooner that no matter what I did guys would claim to have fucked me every which way under the sun.”

Let's just...get through this.

SUMMARY

Author Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah has spent decades talking to African women around the world about sex. Now, she's translated it into a this book The Sex Lives of African Women: Self-Discovery, Freedom and Healing where she talks to African women across the globe while simultaneously chronicling her own journey toward sexual freedom.

We meet several different kinds of women like Esther, who talks of how a childhood rape made her rebellious and estranged from her missionary parents. We meet Tsitsi and HIV-positive Zimbabwean woman who's raising an HIV-free baby. We hear from the queer community in Egypt, the polyamorous life in Senegal and the intersections of religion and pleasure in Cameroon. 

All these stories make up this book that shows women being in control of their own bodies and pleasure and asserting their sexual power.

MY THOUGHTS
I. did. not. like. this. book. 

There was not one redeeming quality about this book for me.

The collection of stories came across as disjointed and the writing for a lot of the stories were pedestrian.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's the truth. When I read Salaam, Love and Love, Inshallah  both of which were anthologies about sex and relationships in a specific community of people (American Muslims), the writing was absolutely beautiful. Poetic. 

So, I'm expecting the same with this and what do I get? "He went down on me. It felt good," or "Then he sucked on my boobs." Completely juvenile writing. Writing is VERY important to me and if the writing in a book is awful, I can't get through the book.

I also went in expecting this book to have stories from African women, LIVING in Africa. I was ready to travel to Ghana and Sudan and Congo. Nope. I get stories from an African woman living in London or Canada or the Caribbean. 

There was no coordination throughout the book. I learned nothing from this book. How did the author go about selecting the stories for this book?

Another thing, I did not care for the author inserting herself before each story began. I don't want to hear how you met the woman who's about to share her story. Just get to her story.

Again, how did the author go about selecting the stories for this book? It seemed like she had a very clear agenda, which to me came across as: heterosexual relationships=bad, queer relationships=good. It came across as very one dimensional.

This book was not well edited and should have been named The Sex Lives of Afro-Descendent Women. 

I didn't feel sexually liberated reading this book. I felt like I needed a shower.