Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone

By Minna Salami

The creator of the internationally popular, multiple award-winning blog MsAfropolitan applies an Africa-centered feminist sensibility to issues of racism and sexism, challenging our illusions about oppression and liberation and daring women to embrace their power.

Sensuous Knowledge is a collection of thought provoking essays that explore questions central to how we see ourselves, our history, and our world.

What does it mean to be oppressed?
What does it mean to be liberated?
Why do women choose to follow authority even when they can be autonomous?
What is the cost of compromising one’s true self?
What narratives particularly subjugate women and people of African heritage?
What kind of narrative can heal and empower?

As she considers these questions, Salami offers fresh insights on key cultural issues that impact women’s lives, including power, beauty, and knowledge. She also examines larger subjects, such as Afrofuturism, radical Black feminism, and gender politics, all with a historical outlook that is also future oriented. Combining a storyteller’s narrative playfulness and a social critic’s intellectual rigor, Salami draws upon a range of traditions and ideologies, feminist theory, popular culture—including insights from Ms. Lauryn Hill, Beyoncé, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and others—science, philosophy, African myths and origin stories, and her own bold personal narrative to establish a language for change and self-liberation.

Sensuous Knowledge inspires reflection and challenge us to formulate or own views. Using ancestral knowledge to steer us toward freedom, Salami reveals the ways that women have protested over the years in large and small ways—models that inspire and empower us to define our own sense of womanhood today.

In this riveting meditation, Salami ask women to break free of the prison made by ingrained male centric biases, and build a house themselves—a home that can nurture us all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062877093

Minna Salami

Minna Salami is Nigerian, Finnish, and Swedish author, blogger, and social critic, and international keynote speaker. She is the founder of the multiple award-winning blog, MsAfropolitan, which connects feminism with critical reflections on contemporary culture from an Africa-centered perspective. Listed by Elle Magazine as “one of twelve women changing the world” alongside Angelina Jolie and Michelle Obama, Minna has presented talks on feminism, liberation, decolonization, sexuality, African Studies, and popular culture to audiences at the European Parliament, the Oxford Union, Yale University, TEDx, The Singularity University at NASA, and UN Women. She is a contributor to The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and the Royal Society of the Arts, and a columnist for the Guardian Nigeria. She lives in London. 

Reviews for Sensuous Knowledge

[richardderus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Getting older, learning to live with the past, standing on the rocks of the walls you've crashed through and those you've tried to build, is a bear. You can't tell anyone younger what it means and anyone you know your own age not only knows but is busily trying to tidy the dust off their scratched, bloody feet.When what you've seen, felt, done no longer matters to anyone but you...polite avowals of interest are never to be presumed upon...then Life can't take anything else from you and your fears just melt. Sad, isn't it, that the murder hornets whose wings only flap when they have a head of rage built up, never just...leave it. Their stings don't land; their rage grows. The worst has already happened, and a surprising number of people have learned from their own lives that the loud, angry buzz of Being Right heralds nothing but unpleasant tasting and smelling poison.There is an amazing sweetness in indifference. Court it.Favorite quotes:The path to truth lies amid the long winding passageways of the soul, where fear and hope do battle with each other.–and–It is not difficult to show kindness to those we love, or even to strangers who might be in distress; it is easy to show relative consideration. The real test comes when we must forgive those who have done us harm, show love to our enemy. It is a test of our faith, our strength of mind.–and–I regret nothing. Was I talking to her or to myself—or to you, who watch over us without mercy, waiting for us to sin? Was I comforting myself or declaring war on you? Who knows? And nor should you, I said, and walked out.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sister Johanna learned to speak Icelandic when she and Halla roomed together in school many years ago. About twenty years in ago, she made a trip to Iceland to investigate alleged abuse in the school. Two events marked that time. The parish priest fell from the bell tower during her visit, and she found a boy in a broom closet. In the present she goes back to Iceland to talk with a young man who wishes to speak specifically with her although she'd rather remain at her convent tending the her rose garden and minding her dog George Harrison. The story weaves between the time periods. It can be difficult to distinguish if one doesn't pay attention to the text breaks. The beautifully written text paints a poignant picture of the understated abuse and of reflection on an unpleasant time. Sister Johanna's struggles with sexuality emerge as a secondary theme in the book.

[tangledthread · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set in Iceland and Paris, Sister Johanna is sent back to Iceland to re-investigate a allegations of abuse that she had investigated 20 years earlier. The story moves through three different time periods that were sometimes confusing in audiobook format. The story is classic Scandinavian noir which I quite enjoyed.

[judithrs · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Scarament. Olaf Olafsson. 2019. I rushed to read this because I was so taken with the Olafsson’s Restoration. What could I not like about a book that features a nun investigating a possible crime of abuse that is set in Iceland? It is told in flashbacks, and that is confusing at times as Sister Joanna’s memory blends with the present. It is beautifully written. The descriptions of winter in Iceland and the time Sister studied in Paris made me feel like I was there. The horrors of abuse are made even more horrible by the understated way they are described. I am not sure I agree with the resolution, but I have a better understanding of Sister’s motives.

[signoraedie_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While aspects of the story were engaging, the jumping in time with no references to who was speaking made it very difficult to follow.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 Dark and bleak, is this story of a young woman who struggles with a sexual orientation condemned by the Catholic Church. Going back and forth in time and alternating between Paris and Iceland, the story takes the reader inside the abuse accusations in the church. A nun herself now, she is tasked with the responsibility of investigating the abuse accusations arising out of a boys Catholic school in Iceland and their priest. Silence, a most potent motif is a result of sins kept hidden, of boys and their parents who are afraid to speak. The end result was unexpected, and surprising.I liked this, sometimes it is all in the atmosphere, and this book has it in spaces. The story had a authentic feel, the cold, brooding landscape, a scandal that has hit churches hard all over the world. It all fit together. Plus, I was reading while sitting in front of my picture window, while the sky darkened, the sun set and it seemed like I could imagine the story happening just as it did. Not quite the happy holiday story I should be reading, but it did fit the melancholy I am prone to as the sun stays hidden so often in winter months.ARC from Netgalley.

[eyes92c · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Intense Nordic drama!A boy locked in a school's broom closet views something strange out of the window.A Catholic nun whose locked away her own secrets, including the reasons for her not quite belonging despite her best efforts. Her sense of humor, her attachment to her dog George Harrison and her rose garden don't quite still her heart. The persuasive church hierarchy who don't want to know. Cardinal Raffin, a sly holder of Sister Joanna Marie's life from before. He thinks that sending a nun with secrets can be controlled to investigate a school where abuse charges have been made. That this will suffice.Sister Joanna is sent not once but twice, in her forties and then twenty years later to investigate complaints about the church school. The major part of the novel, is set in Reykjavík, Iceland. How Sister Joanna comes to speak Icelandic is another story that we glimpse as Joanna recalls her time at the Sorbonne as she waits in Paris for her evening flight. Later we come to know more details.I felt like I was constantly in an ice storm reading this, not quite knowing which way was up, but aware of danger. The clues are just beyond reach, almost. I often felt overwhelmed by Joanna's powerlessness in the face of the church hierarchy. I felt the weight of her secrets. I lived the consequences of both her indecisions and her decisions.The ending was a surprise and yet not really. The story looks at the interweaving of the past and present, of how small vacillations, even non action can effect the future. That I am forced to reflect on all that goes on long after I finished reading further commends this story by Olafsson to me. At its heart it is dark and yet the light enters, just in rather different ways.A HarperCollins ARC via NetGalley

[auntmarge64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sister Johanna Marie, a middle-aged French nun, speaks Icelandic. This she learned from a roommate at the Sorbonne many years ago: a roommate with whom she fell in love and whose presence drove her into the convent. Although she never made her feelings known, she has been hounded for decades by her bishop, now a cardinal, for his perceptions of her feelings, and twice he has emotionally blackmailed her into investigating accusations of child abuse by priests. The second time, sent to Reykjavík because of her knowledge of the language, the nun is emotionally tortured for several reasons: she wonders what's happened to the Icelandic girl and whether she should try to find her; she frets over her failure the first time the bishop recruited her for this task; she finds herself being officially thwarted at every turn by her superiors and the parents and children involved; and, as becomes evident only late in the book, she pushes this investigation too far. What also becomes clear only in the last half of the book is that there are two timelines in her travel to Iceland. The second trip, which comes into focus only slowly, is years after the first, and comes about because her presence is requested by a (now-grown) child she met briefly during the old investigation. The shifts between timelines are not at all clear, and I do think this confusion weakens the reader's ability to appreciate the facts being developed. The nun is insecure, not overly likable, and not particularly wise, and the story is told entirely from her point of view. She feels her life may have had no meaning, and the reader may agree with her, although there is a surprise ending that gives some evidence that she may leave the world a better place. Still, she sees God in her life only when she faces the evil she finds, and I think that must be terribly sad for a religious.