Reclaiming Afrikan

About this book

"[This publication] is a collaboration and collection of art, photography, and critical essays interrogating the meanings and everyday practices of queer life in Africa today. In Reclaiming Afrikan, authors, activists, and artists from NIgeria, Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, and South Africa offer fresh perspectives on queer life; how gender and sexuality can be understood in Africa as ways of reclaiming identities in the continent. Africa is known to be harsh towards people with non-conforming genders and sexual identities. It is within this framework that Reclaiming Afrikan exists to respond to such violations and to offer alternative ways of thinking and being in the continent. The book appropriates 'Afrika' and 'queer' to affirm sexual identities that are ordinarily shamed and violated by prejudice and hatred. The use of 'k' in Afrika signals an appropriation of an identity and belonging that is always detached from a 'queer' person.'Queer' in this book is understood as an inquiry into the present, as a critical space that pushes the boundaries of what is embraced as normative"--Back cover.