‘Love Falls on Us’ explores the intersection of African LGBT rights and American activism

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09/19/2020

The book in this installment of the African Politics Summer Reading Spectacular — “Love Falls on Us: A Story of American Ideas and African LGBT Lives” — focuses on LGBTQ rights and draws on multiple experiences from West Africa to paint a fuller picture. Robbie Corey-Boulet’s book analyzes and illustrates the lives and activism of sexual minorities in Africa through sharing stories from Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia. “Love Falls on Us” is a solid introduction to LGBTQ rights in Africa. Corey-Boulet situates the individual stories of sexual minorities in these three West African countries by clearly communicating how their lives and activism are part of a broader political economic context. “Love Falls on Us” avoids both the Afro-pessimist and “Africa is doing great” tropes. Corey-Boulet gives us a thoughtful, critical book that shines a light on some of the pitfalls of American advocacy for African LGBTQ rights. Like the scenario in other interventions to improve the human condition, American advocacy for LGBTQ rights can involve, as the author notes, foreigners “with half-formed ideas about helping people who are pitied but never consulted, invoked but never heard from.”

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