A 5 year-old girl, Ramata Diarra was decapitated last month in a suspected ritual murder for her body parts in Mali. The Salif Keita Global Foundation published this emotional poem of the girl “speaking” from the grave, asking for justice, and protection of people with albinism.
African identities
African identities International Albinism Awareness Day: “shining our light to the world”
Today we celebrate International Albinism Awareness Day with the global theme “shining our light to the world”. People with albinism continue to face multiple forms of discrimination worldwide. “The battle continues, but we are gaining ground,” UN expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism Ikponwosa Ero said.
African identities Black conservativism and the everyday pleasure aesthetic
Black women across gender lines are pushing back against the gaze of patriarchy, policing and respectability by owning their bodies and exploring pleasure on their own terms. Ntombizikhona Valela explores how women are defining for themselves a pleasure aesthetic that centres on their humanity and reclaiming ownership of their bodies.
African identities Insights and ironies: Being an African vegetarian
Most African staple foods are plant based yet the notion of being a non-meat eater is deemed “un-African”, “bourgeois” or “finicky” by many. If you are thinking of making the change, here are some of the things you can expect as a new vegetarian in an African city.
African identities Learning to love without ownership: Journal of an African bisexual woman
What does being a non-monogamous, bisexual woman living in Ghana mean? How do I live out my love life? One woman honestly shares her experiences in this philosophical exploration of what love is, what it can be, how it can be felt or expressed outside the norms of what love has been made to be.
African identities Is learning Kiswahili more beneficial than learning a foreign language?
What do Africans really think about having a common language? For many Kiswahili is the answer to having a common language on the continent, but how feasible is it, particularly for non-Swahili speaking countries?
African identities The limits of imagining pleasure: Writing the history of African sex
Is kissing unAfrican? Is foreplay unAfrican? These questions speak to ideas which view certain aspects of pleasure and sexuality as foreign. Through fiction, Rafeeat Aliyu says African writers can challenge stereotypes and assumptions of the place of both romance and pleasure in history by creating stories that push at imposed boundaries.
African identities My Pleasure, As A Bottom, Matters
I am here, and my pleasure matters. Motlatsi Motseoile explores the intricacies of sex in gay relationships, and how being a bottom is often mired in shame and ridicule.
African identities Ubungcwele be Hule: The sacredness of women who flourish in their sexuality
Warning: article contains nudity. Black women’s bodies have been sites for the world’s battles for so long that we have forgotten how to imagine them as sites of pleasure; a space where we can own it rather than give it away.