Queer in Africa

This is a very welcome and wide-ranging set of original essays that will add to our rapidly expanding awareness of African sexualities. Both academic and activist, the essays help both clarify and move beyond traditional Western theories and categories.

Ken Plummer, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK

Queer in Africa is a powerful intervention in the roiling debates around sexuality in the region. I hope it gets widely read on the continent and beyond, not only because it gives a platform to a diverse range of fascinating scholars and activists from countries outside of southern Africa - toward which the literature on queer themes has historically been skewed. But also because the evidence and arguments it presents so forcefully challenge the heterosexism or passive acceptance of gender and sexual binaries that still prevail in so much scholarship (and art) from and about the continent. It is a disturbing fact that "Africa" is often treated as a footnote in queer theory in the Global North, or its supposedly monolithic homophobia as a rhetorical football in homonationalist self-congratulations. Yet even scholars of gender in Africa commonly continue to ignore contests around non-normative sexuality and identity in their research, and to justify their disinterest by the somewhat misleading claim that sexual minorities are a hard-to-reach population. Yes they are, except when one knows or intuits where to look and how to ask questions respectfully. I congratulate the editors of Queer Africa for assembling such a rich tapestry of respectfully asked questions.

Marc Epprecht, Professor and Head of the Department of Global Development Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada