Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah. Picture: Nana Kofi Acquah/The Guardian
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah. Picture: Nana Kofi Acquah/The Protector
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s latest publication The gender resides of African girls examines self-discovery, versatility and healing. She discusses everything she has read
Finally customized on Mon 26 Jul 2021 15.08 BST
Letter ana Darkoa Sekyiamah features a face that grins at rest. Whenever the woman is speaking, its with a constant smile, the one that best falters when she talks about a number of the challenging situation she as well as other African ladies went through inside their quest for intimate liberation. She speaks for me from their residence town of Accra, Ghana, in which she says “no one is amazed” that she’s got composed a book about sex. As a blogger, author and self-described “positive sex evangelist”, she’s got been accumulating and recording the intimate experience of African lady for more than a decade. This lady latest guide, The gender life of African lady, is an anthology of confessional reports from throughout the African continent and diaspora. The tales is sorted into three areas: self-discovery, versatility and healing. Each “sex lifestyle” try told during the subject’s very own words. The result is a novel which will take an individual into the beds of polygamous marriages in Senegal, to furtive lesbian hookups in lavatories in Cairo and polyamorous clubs in america, but without the sensationalism or essentialism. The lady aspiration, in guide as with existence, are “to build more space” for African females “to bring available and sincere conversations about intercourse and sexuality”.
Sekyiamah was born in London to Ghanaian parents in a polygamous union, but grew up in Ghana. Their formative years in Accra comprise under a patriarchal, old-fashioned, Catholic program that ingrained in her own a fear of intercourse and all of the potential hazards – pregnancy, embarrassment, getting a “fallen” lady. “i recall once my personal period performedn’t come,” she recalls. “I found myself in Catholic college at the time, and that I would go to the convent every single day and pray, because I imagined that created I was pregnant.” From the moment she attained puberty she got informed: “Now you’ve got their course, you’re a woman, you can’t allowed guys reach you. That was constantly in my own mind.” Afterwards, she got told: “If you leave their wedding no-one more will would like you. When You Yourself Have a young child as a single lady guys are going to consider you just as a sexual object and never a possible companion.” Her mama would merely talk with the woman about intercourse in cautionary techniques. “The concept of fooling with guys ended up being thus scary for me. They kept myself a virgin for years and ages.”
Inside her late teens, Sekyiamah transferred to great britain to examine and began reading feminist books. She realized simply how much everything terror ended the lady, and various other female, from getting their health, their unique enjoyment and, by expansion, from “taking up their particular place in the world”. She relocated back once again to Ghana and, in ’09, co-founded a blog, Adventures from rooms of African lady. “I begun revealing personal private reports, personal experiences, and motivating other people to express their particular stories. So the writings became a collective room for African people, whether they happened to be inside the continent or even in the diaspora, just to thought aloud, show knowledge, to understand from a single another.” The blog was actually a hit, and is deluged std chat room cam with articles from African lady revealing their tales of love and erotica. They acquired prestigious honours in Ghana and obtained Sekyiamah along with her co-founder, Malaka offer, international popularity. But over the years, she begun to desire to review, and compose, anything longer. She realised that “people have no idea towards real life of African women’s encounters when it comes to gender and sex. I believe like people usually think about African women as repressed or continuously pregnant or they don’t bring sanitary bathroom towels or they’ve started clipped [genitally mutilated]. I happened to be discovering the depth in our experiences through the web log, I really believe: ‘I would like to create a novel about the knowledge of African people.’”
