Knowing Women: Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana

Publisher:

Cambridge University Press

Publication date:

07 January 2021

21 January 2021

ISBN:

9781108863575

9781108495905

9781108811026

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108863575

Creative Commons:

This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.
https://creativecommons.org/creativelicenses

Dimensions:

(229 x 152 mm)

Weight & Pages:

0.62kg, 332 Pages

Dimensions:

(229 x 152 mm)

Weight & Pages:

0.49kg, 332 Pages

Series:: African Identities: Past and Present
Subjects:: Area Studies, African Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Politics and International Relations, Anthropology, African Government, Politics and Policy, African History

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Series:: African Identities: Past and Present
Subjects:: Area Studies, African Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Politics and International Relations, Anthropology, African Government, Politics and Policy, African History

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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.

Finalist, 2022 Best Book Award, African Studies Association

Winner, 2022 Ruth Benedict Book Prize, Outstanding Single Authored Monograph, The Association for Queer Anthology

Winner, 2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Titles

‘This remarkable book deserves a wide audience … Theoretically subtle and accessible and beautifully written … Highly recommended.’

C. Higgs Source: Choice Magazine

‘The book’s rich ethnographic account adds to the life accounts of queer Africans emerging in the form of memoirs, autobiographical accounts, and documentaries. Also, the book centers the unruliness of sexuality outside how it has been constructed historically by religion and medicine. The five-chapter book, with an introduction and conclusion, uses a multidisciplinary approach that emphasizes friendship rather than sexuality to trouble ideas of gender, kinship, and same-sex desire in Ghana while accounting for ways that they overlap and detour from those of Europe and North America.’

Rosemary Oyinlola Popoola Source: PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review

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Knowing Women

Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana

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Contents

Knowing Women
pp i-i

African Identities: Past and Present - Series page
pp ii-ii

Knowing Women - Title page
pp iii-iii

Copyright page
pp iv-iv

Dedication
pp v-vi

Contents
pp vii-vii

Figures
pp viii-viii

Acknowledgments
pp ix-xii

Prologue: Arrival Stories
pp 1-17

Introduction: Freeing Our Imaginations
pp 18-46

1 - Tacit Erotic Intimacies and the Culture of Indirection
pp 47-78

2 - Supi, Secrecy, and the Gift of Knowing
pp 79-122

3 - “The One Who First Says ‘I Love You’”
pp 123-171

4 - Sugar Motherhood and the Collectivization of Love
pp 172-219

5 - “Doing Everything Together”
pp 220-266

Conclusion: A Fabric that Never Goes Out of Fashion
pp 267-279

Bibliography
pp 280-302

Index
pp 303-318

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Knowing Women

Same-Sex Intimacy, Gender, and Identity in Postcolonial Ghana

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