Seeking Sexual Freedom: African Rites, Rituals, and Sankofa in the Bedroom

This eye-opening account from Ghanaian podcaster Sekyiamah (The Sex Lives of African Women) posits that traditional African rituals can offer women and queer people new ways of thinking about their bodies and pleasure. Noting that African women’s sexuality is often seen as “sinful” or “selfish,” mostly due to the legacy of European colonial influence, Sekyiamah argues in favor of sankofa, or “revisiting the past to retrieve the good in our history.” Roaming the continent to participate in ceremonies related to sex and sexuality, she learns how to best gyrate her hips with a traditional Tanzanian sex educator and explores the eroticism of Senegalese waist beads (“an essential tool in the Senegalese woman’s sexual armory”). She also treats with respect controversial customs like labia pulling, undergone by girls ages 8 to 14, finding radical potential in the practice—“I’m not aware of any other traditions where little girls are encouraged to become intimate with their genitalia and urged to enjoy personal touch”—and observes ways in which African spiritualities sometimes embrace queerness. Rather than uncritically embracing the traditions she spotlights, the author reflects on how they can be updated and reworked through a feminist lens, though the book’s latter half, geared toward offering advice, feels a bit dull after such an invigorating travelogue. Nevertheless, readers will find this a paradigm-shifting road map to sexual reclamation. (Mar.)