Karen Martin (3)

If you are interested in the stories and experiences of people outside of the USA and UK (and Europe in general although this is talked about less than the former) I would definitely recommend picking this up. Is it my favourite book? No. But it does explore the experiences of queer people that are largely ignored. Some of the stories are a little uncomfortable (particularly A Boy is a boy is a and In the Way she Glides in my case) because of the topics they choose to explore - that's not to say that these make them bad of course! Just be aware that some have difficult contents.

This book does mostly contain southern African authors so although containing a diverse range of stories it doesn't necessarily have the biggest geographic diversity (I'm not sure how this changes in the second book). I also felt like it was slightly biased to mlm characters, but when I counted it up it was split about equally between mlm and wlw representation. A few of the wlw stories are more about longing rather than relationships though, which may have contributed towards this feeling. Of course there is nothing wrong with these kinds of stories though! I definitely didn't dislike them and they represent very real experiences and issues that queer women face. It just maybe made the book feel a little skewed.… (mer)

I’m trying to expand the countries and cultures that I read so I picked this up for the library as a way to delve further into African queer stories.

This is a collection of 25 short stories from many countries across Africa and I found the best way to give each story the attention it deserved was to read one and then step away in order to absorb it before moving on. As with many collections some stories harder than others.

Only one story did I end up giving up on only to find out it led to an incestuous encounter later on… a lucky escape for me and not really something that fits in this kind of anthology and casts a shadow on the other works.

Overall I think this is an easy book to dip in and out of and would likely lead the reader to longer queer novels from Africa… Under The Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta would be one I recommend to any interested!… (mer)