Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is on a quest to encourage African women across the globe to live their best sex lives. As co-founder of the sex-positive feminist blog, Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, she has promoted sexual pleasure for African women for over a decade. In this book she shares lessons she’s learnt along the way, and insights gained from research and conversations with sex-positive African feminists, as well as knowledge gained from a series of sexual freedom workshops she has run with diverse groups of women.
We Need to Talk about Sex also excavates and reclaims traditional African sexual knowledge and practices in ways that can serve the contemporary African woman. Nana recounts conversations with women who hold responsibilities for organising traditional practices such as the dipo puberty rites in Ghana and the Ssengas (traditional marriage counsellors) in Uganda. And each chapter of the book ends with a bulleted list of journal prompts, and exercises that you can do on their own to find your own way towards sexual liberation.
We Need to Talk about Sex also excavates and reclaims traditional African sexual knowledge and practices in ways that can serve the contemporary African woman. Nana recounts conversations with women who hold responsibilities for organising traditional practices such as the dipo puberty rites in Ghana and the Ssengas (traditional marriage counsellors) in Uganda. And each chapter of the book ends with a bulleted list of journal prompts, and exercises that you can do on their own to find your own way towards sexual liberation.
Reviews
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is officially our pleasure fairy godmother! In Seeking Sexual Freedom, she scours the African continent and its diaspora, learning about sexuality in all its forms, so that we can truly liberate ourselves. A generous and important book.
Seeking Sexual Freedom strikes at the heart of what we all deserve: full bodily autonomy, deep relationality, and reclamation of traditions that are rightfully ours. Today's global struggles against fascism will be strengthened by Sekyiamah's insights and brilliance. We cannot afford another century of radical movements that fail to account for people as sexual beings, this book will help us reimagine what is possible.
Seeking Sexual Freedom anchors itself through the Akan word and symbol, Sankofa, reminding us that erotic agency is not only ancestral but also the conduit to futurity. This sacred text is an offering of sexual porosity that transcends colonial narratives-a challenge against dismemberment, a pathway to wholeness.
A stunning exploration of how pleasure, ritual, and inherited wisdom can transform the way we understand ourselves. This book travels across borders and generations to reveal how intimacy becomes a site of healing, resistance, and freedom. A fresh and necessary perspective on sexuality, tradition, and liberation.
Intimate and radical . . . Sekyiamah takes us on a journey across Africa and its diaspora - to Vodoun temples in Benin, kitchen parties in Tanzania, Candomblé ceremonies in Brazil - searching for the sexual wisdom colonization attempted to erase. With the vulnerability and clarity of a seasoned feminist, she weaves together ancient practices and contemporary struggles. Sekyiamah shows that the path to liberation requires an unflinching look backward to move forward. Frank, fearless, and deeply personal, Seeking Sexual Freedom is Sekyiamah's invitation to join her in the revolutionary act of reclaiming pleasure.
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah has carved herself out a niche in African sexology. An important work of cultural anthropology, Sekyiamah chronicles these stories with insight, humor and vulnerability.
Nana Darkoa tells bold stories for women who need them. I adore the overlaps in this text between spirituality, geography, culture and sexuality. A carefully researched book and conversation starter about pleasure, autonomy, as well as the function of history in creating new maps, this work will be eye-opening for many.
Adventurous, curious, honest and at times totally mind-blowing. A book for anyone who cares about female pleasure. Which is to say, a book for everyone!
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah has done it again. Seeking Sexual Freedom is an essential history and a rallying cry for sexual liberation for Black women---cishet, trans, queer, sex workers, all of us. Guided by the principle that pleasure is our birthright, Sekyiamah's inquiries and explorations across the African continent remind us that 'tradition' doesn't have to be a dirty word and that our bodies can be sites of resistance. Seeking Sexual Freedom is chockfull of practical wisdom for cultivating joyful, erotic practices. I will return to my dog-eared copy again and again.