Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society - Hardcover

by Ifi Amadiume (Author), Ifi Amadiume (Editor)

Winner of the Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year

In 1987, more than a decade before the dawn of queer theory, Ifi Amadiume wrote Male Daughters, Female Husbands to critical acclaim. Here Amadiume boldly argues that the notion of gender, as constructed in Western feminist discourse, did not exist in Africa before the colonial imposition of a dichotomous understanding of sexual difference.

This new Essential Amadiume edition illustrates for a new generation of readers the specifically Western origins of the gender essentialisms to which much current gender theory reacts. In showing how those notions have been projected onto other cultures through colonialism, and in exploring traditional west African practices that conceive of gender otherwise, it re-opens other alternatives to them.

Author Biography

Ifi Amadiume is an award-winning poet and a political activist as well as an academic. She has lived in Nigeria and the UK and is currently associate professor at Dartmouth College, USA. There, she teaches in both the Department of Religion and the African-American Studies Programme.