States of emergence

Writing African female same-sex sexuality

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12458993
AutoresBrenna M Munro, Brenna Munro (University of Miami, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen21
Número2
Páginas186-203
Fecha de publicación2016-09-07
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Lesbian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1089-4160 • E-ISSN: 1540-3548
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10894160.2016.1148471
PMID27604054
OpenAlexW2509349825
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas6

Tracing a series of intertextually linked short stories from the 1990s to the present by women writers from Nigeria and its diaspora-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Unoma Azuah, Chinelo Okparanta, and Lola Shoneyin-I suggest that although the figure of the African lesbian appears "new" in the context of heightened contemporary attention to the issue of homosexuality, this figure has a literary history. Ghanaian Ama Ata Aidoo's novel Our Sister Killjoy: Or, Reflections From A Black-Eyed Squint (1977) inaugurates this formation, in which the imagining of female same-sex desire is entangled with articulating the experience of migration under the shadow of imperial histories. In these short stories, the emphasis on the difficulties of love in puritanical times and transnational places produces the figure of the African lesbian as a symbol of appealingly human vulnerability, resilience, and complexity

Female sex · Human sexuality · Same sex · Sociology · African history and culture studies · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Gender Studies · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Medicine · Psychology