The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro- Surinamese Diaspora (Between Men--Between Women) | 
 enlarge | Author: Gloria Wekker
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 654746
Media: Paperback
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0231131631
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.765089960883
EAN: 9780231131636
ASIN: 0231131631
Publication Date: April 4, 2006
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| Customer Reviews:
Simply Excellent! August 20, 2007
Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book is an excellent blend of anthropology, ethnic studies, women's studies, gay studies, and postcolonial studies. Progressives bemoan studies that fail to consider race, class, gender, and sexuality together; well, this is an important intervention in that dearth of material. For those who do not understand the difference between essentialism and constructionism, this will make you understand.
Professor Griff, Winnie Mandela, Robert Mugabe and so many others make false claims that Africa had no homosexuality until Europeans intervened. Dr. Wekker disproves that by showing how Surinamese mati are influenced greatly by West African religion and principles. You could almost say this is an Afrocentric support of Blacks in same-sex romantic relationships. This is a book that Black gay male and lesbian activists all over the Diaspora need to own and read. Some may want to read this book along side "African Homosexualities."
When quoting informants, Dr. Wekker uses their actual Surinamese language and then translates it into English. For polyglots and those familiar with the Dutch-speaking world, this may be informative. However, there is a way that it just takes up space. This book would have been 50 pages shorter without it. Perhaps, Dr. Wekker wants readers to inhabit multilingual terrains, as Gloria Anzaldua did. Still, I think readers like me who don't understand any form or Dutch will skip through a lot. I did love some of the colorful idioms and phrases here. One Surinamese woman says, "Only god knows why he didn't give the horse horns." I'm still trying to find a way to use that phrase in 21st-century America! (By the way, the author writes in American English, rather than British English.)
Dr. Wekker tries to "keep it real." She stands against bourgeois posing intended to impress elite audiences. Still, there is a way that this book makes us Black people look bad. The book is filled with violence, sexual promiscuity, womanizing from either gender, disparagement of marriage, and other things that some may find objectionable. I do worry about what would happen if this book gets into the wrong people's hands.
You can see and hear the author in a documentary called "Middle Sexes" narrated by Gore Vidal. As women's studies departments become gender studies departments, readers may want to peruse this alongside Bana-Shute's book on Surinamese men.
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