Williams Institute Reading Room: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resources in Law and Public Policy: Africa

Presenting the deeply moving personal life stories of Ugandan LGBTQ+ refugees in Nairobi, Kenya alongside an analysis of the process in which they creatively engaged with two Bible stories - Daniel in the Lions' Den (Old Testament) and Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery (New Testament) - Sacred Queer Stories explores how readings of biblical stories can reveal their experiences of struggle, their hopes for the future, and their faith in God and humanity. Arguing that the telling of life-stories of marginalised people, such as of Ugandan LGBTQ+ refugees, affirms embodied existence and agency, is socially and politically empowering, and enables human solidarity, the authors also show how the Bible as an authoritative religious text and popular cultural archive in Africa is often used against LGBTQ+ people but can also be reclaimed as a site of meaning, healing, and empowerment. The result of a collaborative project between UK-based academics and a Nairobi-based organisation of Ugandan LGBTQ+ refugees, the book provides a valuable insight into the narrative politics and theologies of LGBTQ+ life-storytelling. A key text for those in African Humanities, Queer Studies, Religious Studies, and Refugee Studies, among others, the book expresses an innovative methodology of inter-reading queer life-stories and biblical stories.
*Also ebook (UC users only)

Religion is often seen as a conservative force in contemporary Africa. In particular, Christian beliefs and actors are usually depicted as driving the opposition to homosexuality and LGBTI rights in African societies. This book nuances that picture, by drawing attention to discourses emerging in Africa itself that engage with religion, specifically Christianity, in progressive and innovative ways - in support of sexual diversity and the quest for justice for LGBTI people.The authors show not only that African Christian traditions harbor strong potential for countering conservative anti-LGBTI dynamics; but also that this potential has already begun to be realized, by various thinkers, activists and movements across the continent. Their ten case studies document how leading African writers are reimagining Christian thought; how several Christian-inspired groups are transforming religious practice; and how African cultural production creatively appropriates Christian beliefs and symbols. In short, the book explores Christianity as a major resource for a liberating imagination and politics of sexuality and social justice in Africa today. Foregrounding African agency and progressive religious thought, this highly original intervention counterbalances our knowledge of secular approaches to LGBTI rights in Africa, and powerfully decolonizes queer theory, theology and politics.

A glimpse into the lives of LGBTQ migrants in Johannesburg, in their own words Seeking Sanctuary brings together poignant life stories from fourteen lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) migrants, refugees and asylum seekers living in Johannesburg, South Africa. The stories, diverse in scope, chronicle each narrator's arduous journey to South Africa, and their corresponding movement towards self-love and self-acceptance. The narrators reveal their personal battles to reconcile their faith with their sexuality and gender identity, often in the face of violent persecution, and how they have carved out spaces of hope and belonging in their new home country. In these intimate testimonies, the narrators' resilience in the midst of uncertain futures reveal the myriad ways in which LGBT Africans push back against unjust and unequal systems. Seeking Sanctuary makes a critical intervention by showing the complex interplay between homophobia and xenophobia in South Africa, and of the state of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) rights in Africa. By shedding light on the fraught connections between sexuality, faith and migration, this ground-breaking project also provides a model for religious communities who are working towards justice, diversity and inclusion.
*Also eBook (UC users only)

This book addresses the impact of HIV on populations of men who have sex with men in Africa and local responses to the issue. It documents the enduring existence of a rich variety of same-sex practices between men. More critically, it analyses how the denial and social rejection of same-sex sexuality, together with the legacy of criminalization by former colonial rulers, has not only fueled the transmission of HIV between men, but has also impeded an effective response. The book also documents some of the outstanding progress that has been made and acknowledges the differences between African countries. Through its focus on lived realities and grassroots activism in Africa, this book will appeal to researchers, policy makers and practitioners alike.

Knowing Women is a study of same-sex desire in West Africa, which explores the lives and friendships of working-class women in southern Ghana who are intimately involved with each other. Based on in-depth research of the life histories of women in the region, Serena O. Dankwa highlights the vibrancy of everyday same-sex intimacies that have not been captured in a globally pervasive language of sexual identity. Paying close attention to the women's practices of self-reference, Dankwa refers to them as 'knowing women' in a way that both distinguishes them from, and relates them to categories such as lesbian or supi, a Ghanaian term for female friend. In doing so, this study is not only a significant contribution to the field of global queer studies in which both women and Africa have been underrepresented, but a starting point to further theorize the relation between gender, kinship, and sexuality that is key to queer, feminist, and postcolonial theories. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

A significant contribution to anthropology, history, and gender studies that reveals the denials of homosexuality in traditional and contemporary African societies to be rooted in colonialist ideologies.
Also eBook: Boy-Wives and Female Husbands

An ethnographic account of the South African AIDS movement and activists From the historical roots of AIDS activism in the struggle for African liberation to the everyday work of community education in Khayelitsha, Sustaining Life tells the story of how the rights-based South African AIDS movement successfully transformed public health institutions, enabled access to HIV/AIDS treatment, and sustained the lives of people living with the disease. Typical accounts of the South African epidemic have focused on the political conflict surrounding it, Theodore Powers observes, but have yet to examine the process by which the national HIV/AIDS treatment program achieved near-universal access. In Sustaining Life, Powers demonstrates the ways in which non-state actors, from caregivers to activists, worked within the state to transform policy and state-based institutions in order to improve health-based outcomes. He shows how advocates in the South African AIDS movement channeled the everyday experiences of poor and working-class people living with HIV/AIDS into tangible policy changes at varying institutional levels, revealing the primacy of local action for expanding treatment access. In his analysis of the transformation of the state health system, Powers addresses three key questions: How were the activists of the movement able to overcome an AIDS-dissident faction that was backed by government power? How were state health institutions and HIV/AIDS policy transformed to increase public sector access to treatment? Finally, how should the South African campaign for treatment access inform academic debates on social movements, transnationalism, and the state? Based on extended participant observation and in-depth interviews with members of the South African AIDS movement, Sustaining Life traces how the political principles of the anti-apartheid movement were leveraged to build a broad coalition that changed national HIV/AIDS policy norms and highlights how changes in state-society relations can be produced by local activism.
*Also available as an eBook (UC users only): Sustaining Life

What makes kinship queer? This collection from leading and emerging thinkers in gender and sexualities interrogates the politics of belonging, shining a light on the outcasts, rebels, and pioneers. Queer Kinship brings together an array of thought-provoking perspectives on what it means to love and be loved, to 'do family' and to belong in the South African context. The collection includes a number of different topic areas, disciplinary approaches, and theoretical lenses on familial relations, reproduction, and citizenship. The text amplifies the voices of those who are bending, breaking, and remaking the rules of being and belonging. Photo-essays and artworks offer moving glimpses into the new life worlds being created in and among the 'normal' and the mundane. Taken as a whole, this text offers a critical and intersectional perspective that addresses some important gaps in the scholarship on kinship and families. Queer Kinship makes an innovative contribution to international studies in kinship, gender, and sexualities.

This handbook offers diverse perspectives on queer Africa, incorporating scholarly contributions on themes that reflect and inflect the trajectories of queer contributions to African studies within and outside academia. The Routledge Handbook of Queer African Studies incorporates a range of unique perspectives, reflecting ongoing struggles between regimes of inclusion and those of transformation premised upon different relational and reflexive engagements between queer embodiment and Africa's subjectivities. All sections of this handbook blend contributions from public intellectuals and practitioners with academic reflections on topics not limited to neoliberalism, social care, morality and ethics, social education, and technology, through the lens of queer African studies. The book renders visible the ongoing transformations and resistance within African societies as well as the inventiveness of queer presence in negotiating belonging. This handbook will be of interest to students and scholars of gender and sexuality in Africa, queer studies, and African culture and society.
*Also eBook (UC only): Routledge Handbook of Queer African Studies

This book explores the normalization of HIV and AIDS, reflecting upon the intended and unintended consequences of the multifarious "AIDS industry." The Normalization of the HIV and AIDS Epidemic in South Africa deals with the manner in which the HIV and AIDS epidemic has become such a well-known disease with such wide-ranging ramifications. With its focus on the "AIDS industry," this book examines issues such as the framing of the HIV and AIDS epidemic in a manner that greatly fostered notions of stigmatization and moralization. This book looks at the complexities of dealing with the epidemic in contemporary South Africa, examining the difficulties of addressing the social aspects of a disease in the context of increased focus on technological quick-fix solutions. De Wet explores these issues thoroughly, looking at the social determinants of the spread of the disease as well as the configuration and the nature of the responses to it, and their increasing marginalization as factors to address in an era of increased biomedicalization and concomitant normalization.

In 2009 Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill became a top global news story. Two years later Hillary Clinton declared "Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights," but still today there is little consensus on how to advance those rights beyond the United States and Europe. The fact is that international LGBT activism and allies have created winners and losers. In Africa those who easily identify with the identities of the global movement find support, funding and care. Those whose sexualities don't align so neatly don't. In this moving investigation, award-winning journalist Robbie Corey-Boulet shows that LGBT liberation does not look the same in Africa as it does in the United States or Europe. At a time when there is a groundswell of interest in LGBT life in Africa and attempts at reversing LGBT rights across much of the "developed" world, Corey-Boulet lays bare past failures. To the extent that there exists a right way to engage on LGBT issues in Africa--and, indeed, worldwide--Love Falls on Us is for those looking to learn what it is.

*At Young Research Library.
Popular narratives cite religion as the driving force behind homophobia in Africa, portraying Christianity and LGBT expression as incompatible. Without denying Christianity's contribution to the stigma, discrimination, and exclusion of same-sex-attracted and gender-variant people on the continent, Adriaan van Klinken presents an alternative narrative, foregrounding the ways in which religion also appears as a critical site of LGBT activism. Taking up the notion of "arts of resistance," Kenyan, Christian, Queer presents four case studies of grassroots LGBT activism through artistic and creative expressions-including the literary and cultural work of Binyavanga Wainaina, the "Same Love" music video produced by gay gospel musician George Barasa, the Stories of Our Lives anthology project, and the LGBT-affirming Cosmopolitan Affirming Church. Through these case studies, Van Klinken demonstrates how Kenyan traditions, black African identities, and Christian beliefs and practices are being navigated, appropriated, and transformed in order to allow for queer Kenyan Christian imaginations. Transdisciplinary in scope and poignantly intimate in tone, Kenyan, Christian, Queer opens up critical avenues for rethinking the nature and future of the relationship between Christianity and queer activism in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa.
*Also eBook (UC only): Kenyan, Christian, Queer

This book provides an in-depth account of a qualitative study on the familial arrangements and domestic settings shaping interracial gay partnerships in the South African context, and it offers both empirical and theoretical insights on the topic. While heterosexual intimate relationships, particularly mixed-race couples, have attracted societal and scholarly attention in South Africa due to the country's past history of racial segregation, it is, however, striking how little emphasis is placed on understanding same-sex unions in a transforming South Africa. This book is timely and important because it explores the vignettes, complexities and dynamics of interracial gay intimate relationships, an area that hardly gets the scholarly attention it deserves. The book addresses the intersectionality, and the question of how sexuality, gender, racial identity and personal resources influence the relationship as well as the way resilience strategies are drawn upon to sustain the partnership.
*ebook (UC users only)

"We put together this collection of twenty-five narratives to correct the invisibility, the confusion, the caricaturising and the writing out of queer women from history." This stirring and intimate collection brings together 25 captivating narratives to paint a vivid portrait of what it means to be a queer Nigerian woman. Covering an array of experiences - the joy and excitement of first love, the agony of lost love and betrayal, the sometimes-fraught relationship between sexuality and spirituality, addiction and suicide, childhood games and laughter - She Called Me Woman sheds light on how Nigerian queer women, despite their differences, attempt to build a life together in a climate of fear. Through first-hand accounts, She Called Me Woman challenges us to rethink what it means to be a Nigerian 'woman', negotiating relationships, money, sexuality and freedom, identifying outside the gender binary, and the difficulties of achieving hopes and dreams under the constraints of societal expectations and legal terrorism. These beautifully told stories of resistance and resilience reveal the realities of a community that refuses to be invisible any longer.

Although sexual minorities in Africa continue to face harsh penalties for same-sex relationships, strong anti-homophobic resistance exists across the continent. This book systematically charts the emergence and effects of politicized homophobia in Malawi and shows how it has been used as a strategy by political elites to consolidate their moral and political authority, through punishing LGBT people and dividing social movements. Here, Ashley Currier pays particular attention to the impact of politicized homophobia on different social movements, specifically HIV/AIDS, human rights, LGBT rights, and women's rights movements. Her timely account intervenes in Afro-pessimist portrayals of the African continent as a hotbed of homophobia and unravels the tensions and contradictions underlying Western perceptions of Malawi. It shows that, in reality, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people happily call Malawi home, in spite of heightened antigay vitriol that has generated unwanted visibility for them.

A Human Rights Watch Report; also available online.

*At Young Research Library.
The Anti-Homosexuality (dubbed "Kill the Gays") Bill of 2009 propelled Uganda to the forefront of global media. In its initial manifestation, the Bill threatened to penalize "aggravated homosexuality" with the death penalty. The media attention earned by the proposed legislation opened avenues for transnational cooperation and communication between US-based Human and LGBTI Rights organizations and kuchu (or LGBTI) Ugandans. The Economies of Queer Inclusion focuses on this transnational relationship and the complications that arise when international currency and professionalization transform grassroots organizing. This book excavates how transnational advocacy, which aims to empower LGBTI rights activism, actually restructures and, in some cases, limits local movements. With interview and ethnographic data with activists in Kampala, Uganda and New York City, the research highlights how the introduction of international attention and funding causes organizations to restructure their movement goals and strategies in order to best attract desired partners. The funder-funded relationship causes both local discord and transnational divestment from alternative forms of organizing. The research presents a compelling, counter-narrative that exposes that the development of this economy did not occur because of the Anti-Homosexuality, but rather inspired the legislation and then peaked in the five years following. As an engaged, ethnographic look into a social justice movement, the text explores organizational structures and activist strategies in order to critique and strengthen future mobilization. Accordingly, the text applies various sociological and critical race theories to provide an incisive and in-depth exploration of a powerful political moment.

African sexualities are dynamic, multi-faceted and resilient. However, people with non-heterosexual sexualities and gender variant identities are often involved in struggles for survival, self-definition, and erotic rights. Queer in Africa forms an entry point for understanding the vulnerabilities of queer Africans as shaped by social, cultural and political processes, aiming to provide innovative insights about contentious disagreements over their lives. The volume mediates Southern and Northern scholarship, directing attention toward African-centred beliefs made accessible to a wide audience. Key concerns such as identity construction and the intersections between different social forces (such as nationalist traditionalism and sexualities) are addressed via engaging chapters; some empirically based and others providing critical cultural analysis. Highly interdisciplinary in nature, Queer in Africa provides a key resource for students, academics, and activists concerned with the international support of sex and gender diversity. It will appeal to those interested in fields such as anthropology, film studies, literary studies, political science, public health, sociology, and socio-legal studies.

Homosexuality is a cross-cutting challenge to Malawian society with theological, socio-cultural, economic, legal, political, and human rights implications. This book argues that the solution to the homosexuality debate in Malawi does not lie in either the criminalization or decriminalization of homosexuality; neither does it lie in homophobia nor heterophobia. However, the solution to the homosexuality debate lies in achieving a harmonious co-existence of both heterosexuals and homosexuals by practicing mutual tolerance. The book concludes by suggesting various activities to be taken by: The Government of Malawi; Gay Rights Activists; Religious Leaders; Traditional Leaders; and Malawian Society to ensure the aforementioned tolerance and understanding is encouraged.
*Also available as an ebook (UC users only): The Homosexuality Debate in Malawi

*At Young Research Library.
As lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex identities increasingly secure legal recognition across the globe, these formal equality gains are contradicted by the continued presence of violence. Such violence emerges as a political pressure point for contestations of identity and power within wider systems of global and local inequality. Discourses of homophobia-related violence constitute subjectivities that enact violence and that are rendered vulnerable to it, as well as shaping political possibilities to act against violence. Blackwashing Homophobia critiques prevailing discourses through which violence and its queer targets are normatively understood, exploring the knowledge regimes in which multiple forms of othering are both reproduced and/or resisted. This book draws on primary research on lesbian subjectivity and violence in South Africa examining the intersections of sexual, gender, race and class identities, and the contemporary politics of violence in a postcolonial context: * What are the contending ways of knowing queers and the violence they face? * How are the causes, characters, consequence of, and 'cures' for, violence constructed through such knowledges and what are their power effects? The book explores these questions and their implications for how violence, as an instrument of power, might be countered. Blackwashing Homophobia is a timely intervention for theorising the discourse of homophobia-related violence and what it reveals and conceals, enables and hinders, in relation to queer identities and political imaginaries in times of violence.

A Human Rights Watch report.
Also available online: Audacity in Adversity

A Human Rights Watch report.
Also available online: "No Choice but to Deny Who I Am"

This collection of essays, Protecting the Human Rights of Sexual Minorities in Contemporary Africa, contains papers that were first presented at a colloquium on sexual minority rights in Africa, which took place at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, in December 2014. Viewing homosexuality through a legal and rights-based prism, this volume brings together fourteen essays focusing on various aspects of homosexuality, covering a wide rage of countries from across the continent. The situation in nine countries (Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe) is reviewed; while other contributions are more regional in their perspective. This makes this publication one of the most comprehensive collections of African voices on this topic. For too long African voices have been silent on the fledgling discourse on sexual minorities. This volume seeks to amend this shortcoming.

A Human Rights Watch report.
Also available online: "Tell Me Where I Can Be Safe"

A Human Rights Watch report.
Also available online: The Issue Is Violence

What are the consequences when international actors step in to protect LGBT people from discrimination with programs that treat their sexualities in isolation from the "facts on the ground"? Robert Lorway tells the story of the unexpected effects of The Rainbow Project (TRP), a LGBT rights program for young Namibians begun in response to President Nujoma's notorious hate speeches against homosexuals. Lorway highlights the unintended consequences of this program, many of which ran counter to the goals of local and international policy makers and organizers. He shows how TRP inadvertently diminished civil opportunities at the same time as it sought to empower youth to claim their place in Namibian culture and society. Tracking the fortunes of TRP over several years, Namibia's Rainbow Project poses questions about its effectiveness in the faces of class distinction and growing inequality. It also speaks to ongoing problems for Western sexual minority rights programs in Africa in the midst of political violence, heated debates over anti-discrimination laws, and government-sanctioned anti-homosexual rhetoric.

The persecution of people in Africa on the basis of their assumed or perceived homosexual orientation has received considerable coverage in the popular media in recent years. Gay-bashing by high political and religious figures in Zimbabwe and Gambia; draconian new laws against lesbians and gays and their supporters in Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda; the imprisonment and extortion of gay men in Senegal and Cameroon; and so-called corrective rapes of lesbians in South Africa have all rightly sparked international condemnation. However, much of the analysis thus far has been highly critical of African leadership and culture without considering local nuances, historical factors and external influences that are contributing to the problem. Such commentary also overlooks grounds for optimism in the struggle for sexual rights and justice in Africa, not just for sexual minorities but for the majority population as well. Based on pioneering research on the history of homosexualities and engagement with current lgbti and HIV/AIDS activism, Mark Epprecht provides a sympathetic overview of the issues at play, and a hopeful outlook on the potential of sexual rights for all.

*At College Library, Young Research Library.

Available online: It's Nature, Not a Crime

Also available online: "Guilty By Association"

Also available online: "Treat Us Like Human Beings"

Also available online: "We'll Show You You're A Woman"

Also available online: Curtailing Criticism

*At Young Research Library.

Also available online: Fear for Life

Also available online: Criminalizing Identities

Also available online: Forbidden

*Also available electronically and as a podcast.

Dissertation.

*A 2010 Stonewall Book Awards "Honor Book." At Young Research Library and SRLF.

*At Young Research Library.

*At Young Research Library.

At Young Research Library & College Library.

*At SRLF.

*At Young Research Library.

*Also available online: "In a Time of Torture"

*At College Library and Young Research Library.