Contested Body Geographies: An Autoethnography of Black African Life and Material Praxis

This book offers a powerful and intimate autoethnographic account of Black African womanhood, tracing the author’s journey from Kenya to the UK to interrogate how space, place and the body are co-constituted through colonial and postcolonial histories. This book offers a powerful and intimate autoethnographic account of Black African womanhood, tracing the author’s journey from Kenya to the UK to interrogate how space, place and the body are co-constituted through colonial and postcolonial histories. Drawing on Afro-diasporic feminism, African philosophy, and decolonial geography, the book positions the Black African female body as a living archive—fragmented, surveilled, and continually (re)made within patriarchal and white supremacist frameworks. Through an intimate blend of personal narrative, ancestral memory, and critical theory, it challenges dominant epistemologies that marginalise African experiences and instead advances an African-centred, pluriversal approach to knowledge production. Organised thematically, the chapters move from macro analyses of geography and identity to embodied, intimate explorations of sexuality, kinship, and belonging. Central to this intervention is a re-theorisation of the body as a site of feminist praxis, political agency, and cultural continuity. In doing so, the book critiques universalist feminist frameworks and foregrounds the specificity of Black African women’s lived realities. In decolonising human geography, this book reimagines the relationship between identity, embodiment, and space. It will appeal to scholars and students in gender and sexuality studies, human geography, African and diaspora studies, and critical race and feminist theory.