“Pleasure Is Our Birthright”: Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s Seeking Sexual Freedom and The Gift of Sankofa to Spelman Students

Spelman College positions itself as an institution committed to cultivating intellectual and personal liberation for Black women, often grounded in practices such as Sankofa. Central to this mission is African Diaspora and the World (ADW), a two-semester course required of all first-year students. ADW centers the experiences of people of African descent and promises that “students will learn about themselves, their history and their place within the African diaspora and the broader world."

This commitment is enacted through sustained engagement with literary and historical texts that examine Négritude, the New Negro movement and anti-colonial struggles across Africa, alongside Black Power, the U.S. civil rights movement and evolving questions of diasporic identity. While widely regarded as academically rigorous, the course also encourages critical reflection through its focus on colonialism, imperialism, decolonization, resistance, pan-Africanism, neocolonialism and ecofeminism.

These inquiries frequently extend beyond intellectual analysis, prompting students to engage questions of interiority, particularly how the histories and conditions of the Black diaspora shape understandings of sexuality, agency and embodied freedom.

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, author of "The Sex Lives of African Women" and co-founder of the award-winning podcast and blog "Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women", defines Sankofa in her latest work, "Seeking Sexual Freedom: African Rites, Rituals, and Sankofa in the Bedroom", as an “Akan word” that “literally translates as ‘go back and fetch it.’” Sekyiamah explains that Sankofa signifies the importance of looking to the past to learn from history and applying those insights to build a better future.

With an official motto of “Our Whole School for Christ,” Spelman’s Christian foundation raises important questions about the scope of that liberation. The historical reality that individuals professing Christianity have often upheld conservative ideologies associated with oppressive practices further complicates this framework. In particular, it invites inquiry into how such a foundation may shape or limit students’ sexual freedom, agency and embodied understanding of themselves within spaces intended to foster radical and expansive engagement with African ancestry and cultural practices.

"Sekyiamah’s Seeking Sexual Freedom" (SSF) offers a critical intervention. The book provides an unfiltered and intellectually meticulous framework through which Spelman students might deepen their engagement with Black feminist thought and scholarship. More importantly, it serves as a tool for nurturing interiority, encouraging students to critically examine their sexuality, lived experiences and relationships to pleasure and fulfillment.

In doing so, Sekyiamah’s work has the potential to support a more holistic understanding of liberation that extends beyond the academic and into the personal and complex dimensions of students’ lives.

Sekyiamah’s SSF examines the range of rites and rituals that African communities have practiced for centuries as methods of transmitting knowledge about sex, sexuality and pleasure. The text situates these traditions within a broader historical context, arguing that systems of knowing were disrupted by colonialism, patriarchy and racism. However, Sekyiamah emphasizes that such disruptions represent interruptions rather than erasures. She contends that these traditions can be revisited and reimagined to support the pursuit of sexual freedom in the present. In its latter half, the book offers practical tools, including exercises and reflective practices, that individuals and communities can use to engage in processes of self-discovery and pleasure.

Sekyiamah was moved to write the book after interviewing 30 women across the African continent whom she understood to possess a profound relationship to sexual freedom. Reflecting on the origins of the project, she explains,

“When I started to think about where we might find models of sexual freedom, I returned to the Akan concept of Sankofa, which means ‘go back and take it.’ It is not about retrieving everything from the past, but about taking what is good," Sekyiamah said. "I began to ask what we, as Africans and as Black people, already have that we can build on. Many of the rites and rituals surrounding puberty and marriage hold important lessons, even as some are no longer relevant or have been corrupted. I wondered what it would mean to return to those elements that remain valuable."

This reflection became a central incentive for the book, grounding its exploration of pleasure and liberation in both historical memory and contemporary possibility.

Students arrive at Spelman from diverse geographic, economic and religious backgrounds, often with an awareness of the institution’s historical values and guiding principles. Elements of campus culture, from traditions of white dresses and pearls to enduring patterns of respectability politics, can reflect a broader alignment with conservative norms. These norms are frequently intertwined with proximity to whiteness, shaping expectations of Black womanhood in ways that emphasize modesty, purity and social acceptability.

This intersection of Christianity, conservatism and patriarchy has long informed dominant narratives about sexuality, particularly for Black women. Within such frameworks, sexual agency is frequently constrained by ideals of purity and respectability, limiting opportunities for expansive and self-defined understandings of the body, desire and pleasure. In institutional spaces that aim to center African diasporic knowledge and liberation, these tensions raise important questions about the extent to which students are able to engage fully with their embodied experiences.

Sekyiamah addresses these dynamics directly, noting the profound influence of conservative Christian teachings on how many Black women come to understand their sexuality.

“A particular type of conservative Christian upbringing has influenced many of us to see sex as shameful or wrong. In efforts to protect children, parents often instill fear rather than understanding. As a result, many people do not grow up seeing their bodies as sources of pleasure or care, but instead associate desire with guilt and shame," Sekyiamah said. "This creates a contradiction, where individuals are later expected to enter heterosexual marriage and have children without ever receiving comprehensive education about their bodies or their capacity for joy. A significant part of liberation, then, requires unlearning sexual shame, engaging in ongoing healing and rediscovering pleasure in our bodies."

Sekyiamah’s work also examines what it means to pursue sexual liberation across both heterosexual and queer relationships, acknowledging that challenges arise regardless of the context in which intimacy occurs. She notes that shame remains a persistent barrier, particularly for women whose desire is often stigmatized or dismissed. For queer women, this stigma is compounded by histories of censorship and marginalization, which can leave LGBTQ+ Spelman students feeling that there are limited spaces in which they can authentically explore intimacy and pleasure. These structural constraints can hinder the development of a fully realized understanding of one’s body and desires.

At the same time, heterosexual women must contend with longstanding patriarchal norms that position women’s bodies in relation to male desire. Historical patterns of male dominance, reinforced by conservative ideologies, have often encouraged women to view their bodies as existing for the service of men or within the confines of marriage.

This raises a critical question: Is sexual liberation equally accessible to heterosexual women, and how might institutions cultivate open and affirming spaces for queer women?

Sekyiamah responds to these tensions by affirming the possibility of liberation across identities while emphasizing the importance of self-awareness and intentional practice.

“I wholeheartedly believe sexual liberation is possible for each and every one of us. Awareness is the first step. If you recognize that you are not experiencing pleasure and you want to, it begins with asking what pleasure means to you," Sekyiamah said. "It does not have to be immediate or extreme. It can start with becoming comfortable in your body, caring for it and engaging with it in ways that feel affirming."

She further encourages a reframing of intimacy as exploratory, noting the importance of communication and experimentation in developing fulfilling relationships with oneself and others.

In addressing queer relationships more directly, Sekyiamah also highlights the importance of agency and intentionality in forming connections. She notes that social conditioning often discourages women from expressing desire openly, yet emphasizes that overcoming this hesitation is key to building meaningful relationships.

“There is no way around the difficulty but to make the ask,” she said. “The more you practice, the easier it becomes. Even in the face of possible rejection, you do not lose anything by expressing interest and being open to connection.”

Sekyiamah’s insights illuminate the varied pathways to sexual liberation, emphasizing that both heterosexual and queer experiences are shaped by broader cultural and institutional forces. While these experiences may differ, they remain deeply influenced by shared systems of power, expectation and regulation. Her work ultimately calls for a reimagining of these substructures, urging individuals to pursue agency, reject shame and engage in ongoing processes of self-discovery and pleasure.

Sekyiamah remains attentive to the conditions under which she calls Black women and Black people to pursue sexual liberation. Within the current political climate, marked by renewed challenges to inclusivity surrounding sexuality, gender identity and bodily autonomy, such a pursuit can feel especially daunting. Yet, she encourages Spelman students not only to draw confidence from their studies in ADW but also to ground themselves in the legacy of Black feminist thinkers such as bell hooks.

“My writing is deeply personal. It is born out of questions I am seeking to answer for myself. The powerful thing about personal work is that people find their own ways of resonating with it. That is something bell hooks did so well. She wrote about her own life and the lives of her people, and that is why so many connect with her work. As feminists, we understand that what is deeply personal is also deeply political,” Sekyiamah said.

"Seeking Sexual Freedom" is the kind of work that compels readers not only to consume new information but to practice Sankofa through its literary structure, urging a return to the past in order to reconstruct what colonialism, patriarchy and hegemonic systems have embedded within the minds and spirits of Black people.

For young Black students at Spelman, it offers a rare and transformative opportunity to reclaim sexual liberatory practices rooted in their ancestry, practices that colonization, racism, systemic oppression and the imposition of shame have long obscured. Women’s bodies do not exist to please men, and queer women and people are neither sinful nor deserving of shame in their pursuit of desire and self-acceptance. These are the principles Sekyiamah weaves throughout her work and the conversations she hopes Spelman students and other Black readers will carry forward.

Drawing on her experiences beyond the United States, Sekyiamah calls particular attention to the urgency of questioning how freedom is achieved.

“Even in the most repressive political environment, what does freedom look like?” she said. “I might soon be living in a country where the very work I do, what I write about, will be seen as promotion of homosexuality, and could land me in jail… and I have to figure out, if that happens, what does sexual freedom still look like for me? And I feel like we all have to do that, no matter the environment in which we live in… What does sexual freedom look like in that context?”

For Sekyiamah, Sankofa is not a static return but an ongoing practice, one that leaves no room for surrender.

“They want us to give up, but freedom is a journey, and we’ll get there,” she said.