Customer Reviews

Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities

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Here is a book with oral histories and folklore tales from ethnographers that went to Africa. The book is an eyeopening one into the sexuality aspect of Africans often challenging theories of sexuality. It is an excellent book to answer to the question of How & Why Does Same Sex Sexual Behavior Varies Cross Culturally? It was writing an essay on this topic that got me to this book, I have always wanted to know about this issue since there has been a lot of denial from African colleagues but once I have read the first few pages of the book that 'denial' and "shh" feelings that exist within many Africans, was brought to light. The same smoothness and revelation is experienced throughout the book. The book seperates Africa into four regional sections to illustrate the diversity of African culture within that vast continent. It is very easy to read and simple too. If you are a book worm, you will love this one. It is the book for History, Anthropology or Gender Study students or those with interest in the above mention + Sexuality. The book now occupies a special place in my selective collection, get one too, I am sure there will be no regrets!

The first book to attempt to survey homosexualities across (sub-Saharan) Africa is also a very good one. At a time when certain East African leaders are trying to hold onto power by scapegoating homosexuality as "un-African," Murray and Roscoe show that there are and have been a wide range of roles in "traditional" African cultures for those who love persons of their own sex. Once this is established - and it is established beyond any reasonable doubt - most readers will probably be more interested in the parts of the book dealing with contemporary individuals (including a young Kikuyu's male's memoir, Amory's chapter on the changing conceptions on the Swahili coast, and an explanation of the view in Lesotho and elsewherre that two women cannot have "sex," so that their physical relations are not seen as "sexual").

The book concludes by looking at the "social construction" of homosexualities by cross-tabulating societies with a kind of homosexuality (with relationships structured by age, structured by gender, or more-or-less egalitarian ones) with other structures (e.g., of inheritance, postpartum taboos) in the same societies. No absolute, categorical patterns emerge. I.e., there are correlations, but no clear "if x, then homosexuality y" conclusions.

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"Boy-Wives and Female-Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities" is a wonderful resource for those interested in learning African homosexualities. I gave it four stars because there is little about Somali homosexuality but the book is perfect. It goes from coast to coast and all in between.

I didn't know much about African homosexuality before I bought this book. Now I'm familiar with my home continent's homosexual "tendecies." :-)

I bought a few copies for friends as gifts and they loved it. Some of them have told me it read more like novels than a cultural study, which it is. It is fascinating to the last note. Enjoy, darlings.

I read the 2001 paperback of the originally 1998 book. It was edited by two US anthropologists/activists. The title should have read "Studies in Sub-Saharan Homosexualities". It features some dozen authors, virtually all of which seem to be Westerners also. Which may not make it easier to convince those who say that "African homosexualities" are a colonial invention. However, the content makes it clear that the colonialists' influence had been rather in the reverse, downpressing African homosexualities and brainwashing the new generations of the installed African elite. The term "homosexuality" is Western of course. Coined by an Austrian in Germany in the 19th century, melting Greek and Latin, describing a Western concept. (Which is also true for the term "heterosexuality".) Of course anywhere, you will find humans who fall in love and / or engage in sexuality which may be transcribed as homosexuality by the Western gender concept. There are many differing gender concepts in Africa, however, some of which get mentioned in this book, others not. Read for example When Men Are Women: Manhood Among The Gabra Nomads Of East Africa or Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society, both books NOT describing homosexualities.

The book uses contemporary and colonial sources (such as colonial court cases against "homosexualities".) as well as studies in anthropology. For a more authentic grasp on the material, more African sources themselves would have been more helpful. Probably a matter of availability. Still, some African authors could have shed a more thorough light on certain concepts. Especially old colonial sources are bound to be vague and of the not quite overstanding kind. Elaboration on concepts is something else than these compilation listings in a nut shell.

Still, this book offers a nice updated and important Western entry into the subject matter. (There were German collectors and publishers of the entire world's "homosexualities" in the early 20th century). Can't wait to read some African perspectives some day.

This book covers more (Black) African peoples NOT than it does.

However much or little this book may be flawed, for the time being one shouldn't engage in a denial argument without having read this one.

You may be interested in Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature, the newer African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization and the much, much older German Das Geschlechtsleben der Naturvölker..