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Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities, edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. 358 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-312-21216-X.
While much of the American public laughed in disbelief over President Clinton's semantic maneuvers around the meaning of sex, many of us were seriously asking our students What is sex? Stephen 0. Murray and Will Roscoe's edited anthology, Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities, will undoubtedly be a useful tool in demonstrating why the question is not as simple as it sounds.
The main purpose of the book is to dispel "the myth that homosexuality is absent or incidental in African societies"-understood as a corruption of the "natural" state of African (hetero)sexuality by the decadent colonial influences. Through a collection of reprinted articles, historical documents, contemporary essays, and their own encyclopedic knowledge, the authors more than adequately achieve their goal. Historical documents included in this collection date as far back as 1732 to demonstrate "early" reports of same-sex "sexual" relations. In addition, the editors provide useful appendices of cultural information on the "dark continent." Sensitive to the diversity of the African continent, Murray and Roscoe divide the book into sections organized by four general...