Queer African Cinemas

Book Pages: 264 Illustrations: 49 illustrations Published: March 2022

Subjects
Gender and Sexuality > LGBTQ Studies, Media Studies > Film, African Studies

In Queer African Cinemas, Lindsey B. Green-Simms examines films produced by and about queer Africans in the first two decades of the twenty-first century in an environment of increasing antiqueer violence, efforts to criminalize homosexuality, and other state-sanctioned homophobia. Green-Simms argues that these films not only record the fear, anxiety, and vulnerability many queer Africans experience; they highlight how queer African cinematic practices contribute to imagining new hopes and possibilities. Examining globally circulating international art films as well as popular melodramas made for local audiences, Green-Simms emphasizes that in these films queer resistance—contrary to traditional narratives about resistance that center overt and heroic struggle—is often practiced from a position of vulnerability. By reading queer films alongside discussions about censorship and audiences, Green-Simms renders queer African cinema as a rich visual archive that documents the difficulty of queer existence as well as the potentials for queer life-building and survival.

Praise

“Conceptually rich and deeply pedagogical, Queer African Cinemas models how to think about African queer worldmaking. Lindsey B. Green-Simms wrenches resistance away from heteronormative duty and national obligation to track its wayward possibilities. Resistance is no longer an exhausted term that excludes African queers, but one that centers African queer practices and freedoms. Green-Simms listens for how African queer audiences navigate representation and find succor even in hostile places. A joy to read.” — Keguro Macharia, author of Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy across the Black Diaspora

“Lindsey B. Green-Simms’s compelling insights prod us to think about resistance as multilayered, incomplete, and even messy in ways that reveal how the vulnerabilities of queer life exist alongside multiple modes of survival, care, and aspirational imaginaries. Queer African Cinemas is engaging, generative, and remarkably persuasive.” — Grace A. Musila, author of A Death Retold in Truth and Rumour: Kenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder

“In Queer African Cinemas, Green-Simms offers an insightful and illuminating analysis. . . . Queer African Cinemas makes an important and necessary intervention in queer studies as it works to decenter queerness from the global north and to challenge common understandings of acceptable means of resistance, affect, and representation.” — Bruno Guaraná, Film Quarterly

“[Green-Simms’s] musings on resistance, aspiration, and resilience, among other difficult-to-define and identity-specific terms, is cultural theory at its finest. Queer African Cinemas will be impactful far beyond its range of study. Highly recommended.” — G. R. Butters Jr., Choice

"Written in clear prose and brilliantly self-reflexive in method, this sophisticated reading of queer cinematic texts deserves attention. . . . [A] must-read for those interested in queerness and film studies in Africa and beyond."

— Naminata Diabate, GLQ

"Queer African Cinemas is crucial to anyone interested in the contingency of the present, one in which the past—the project of colonial modernity—has totally shaped today’s attitude toward sexual identity. . . . Queer African Cinemas treats queer Africans with love and care, without condescending to them. This is what happens when a scholar puts the human at the core of a study." — Shola Adenekan, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry

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Author/Editor Bios Back to Top

Lindsey B. Green-Simms is Associate Professor of Literature at American University and author of Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa.

Table of Contents Back to Top
Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. Registering Resistance in Queer African Cinemas  1
1. Making Waves: Queer Eccentricity and West African Wayward Women  37
2. Touching Nollywood: From Negation to Negotiation in Queer Nigerian Cinema  73
3. Cutting Masculinities: Post-Apartheid South African Cinema  123
4. Holding Space, Saving Joy: Queer Love and Critical Resilience in East Africa  165
Coda. Queer African Cinema's Destiny  203
Notes  211
Filmography  227
References  231
Index  243
Sales/Territorial Rights: World

Rights and licensing

Winner of the 2024 African Literature Association Best Scholarly Book Award


Additional InformationBack to Top
Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-1801-8 / Cloth ISBN: 978-1-4780-1540-6 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-2263-3
Funding Information

The open-access edition of Queer African Cinemas was made possible by an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Program.

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