What Is African Woman? Transgressive Sexuality in 21st-Century African Anglophone Lesbian Fiction as a Redefinition of African Feminism

Abstract

The article argues that emerging African lesbian fiction in English is radically redefining African feminism, femininity, and society, imagining a social change toward respect for otherness and the recognition of individual human rights. By proposing the African woman's right to self-determination outside of traditional identities, it distances itself from 20th-century Afrocentric feminist theory and chronicles a radical epistemic shift in the formation of African women's subjectivity. Its move toward feminist individualism signifies a disappointment with the African postcolonial nation that has not served its citizens and especially women, whose gendered bodies have been used to prop up oppressive traditions. Women's experience of sexual pleasure in woman-to-woman sexual acts is figured as an expression of freedom, power, and agency that heterosexual relationships, corrupted by patriarchy, do not provide.