Boy-wives and female husbands Book

Wow, this book sure is something.

First off, as others have pointed out, this is a collection of primarily anthropological, ethnographical, and historical writings from Western perspectives, including the colonial. There are frustratingly few instances of Africans of any culture speaking for themselves. This of course colors perspectives of the patterns discussed. Even in the interview with a young Kikuyu man, the questions seemed more guided by the (American) interviewer's framework of what male gayness entailed than by what the interviewee was saying. One wonders how the interview would have gone had the interviewer been a fellow African, even one from a different culture.

On the other hand, this approach offers a fascinating window into how Western cultures, both historically and modernly, attempt to create and maintain strict categories of sexual orientation and gender identity that do not, in any practical sense, exist (the same way we do with race).

Several authors in the book caution against applying Western frameworks of queerness to African same-sex patterns. However, we all look through the cultural lenses we were raised with, and late '80s-mid-'90s queer Western culture seep into all "modern" chapters (20-25 years is modern by most historical standards but practically archaic by queer theory and culture standards). So, for instance, one author talks about people who were (to use today's vernacular) assigned male at birth and who, as adults, live in women's spaces, pursue traditional women's work, call each other by women's names, and either wear women's clothing or wear men’s clothing in a different, "feminized" way--but insists that we must not think of them as transgendered (sic) or belonging to a "third or alternate gender" simply because none expressed interest in surgical alteration. While I'm sure transmedicalists in the audience would delight in this linking of transgender identity and medical/surgical transition, anyone else might be taken aback by the outdated view.

With all that said, this is still an interesting read, if for no other reason than to counter arguments that queerness is a "modern Western vice." Life patterns that we might in the US call LGBTQIA+ existed across Africa long before colonialism. Indeed, as one author argues, in many African cultures, the real modern Western vices are homophobia and the suppression of behaviors which violate the cis- and heteronormativity forced onto indigenous populations by colonial forces.