Dancing With Jinns: Black Women Write on Taboo

Dancing With Jinns: Black Women Write on Taboo

What happens when Black women refuse to remain silent about the subjects society calls shameful, private or forbidden?

Dancing With Jinns is a bold collection of essays in which Black women writers confront the cultural taboos shaping women’s lives across Africa and its diasporas.

Edited by Layla Mohamed and Ellah Wakatama, the collection creates space for conversations that have too often been hidden behind silence, shame and expectations of respectability.

Its writers explore AIDS, menstruation, mental health, grief, sexuality and patriarchy with honesty and insight. Their essays reveal how personal experiences are shaped by family, history, culture, religion, politics and power.

Black women breaking inherited silences

The subjects examined in this Black women essay collection are deeply personal, but they are never merely private.

Each essay connects individual experience with the cultural forces that determine what women may say, feel or reveal. Together, the writers question who has the authority to decide what is respectable, unacceptable or forbidden.

Some taboos are maintained through direct prohibition. Others survive through whispers, embarrassment, fear or the expectation that women should protect their families and communities by remaining quiet.

Dancing With Jinns challenges those inherited rules. It asks what becomes possible when Black women name their experiences in their own words and without apology.

Personal essays with cultural and political power

Blending lived experience with cultural reflection, the collection moves between the intimate and the political.

These African women’s essays examine how taboos affect the body, mind, family and sense of identity. They also show how silence can protect unequal systems and leave important experiences misunderstood or erased.

The writers do not offer one definition of Black womanhood. Instead, they present a rich range of voices and perspectives shaped by different places, generations and histories across Africa and the diaspora.

The result is a compelling mosaic of vulnerability, resistance and intellectual freedom. It invites readers to listen closely, question inherited assumptions and participate in conversations that can no longer remain hidden.

Why you should read Dancing With Jinns

This powerful collection is ideal for readers interested in:

• Black women’s writing
• African feminist writing
• Black feminist essays
• African diaspora nonfiction
• Women’s gender studies
• Personal and cultural essays
• Books about menstruation and mental health
• Writing about sexuality and patriarchy
• Identity, history and cultural taboos
• Honest discussions of silence, shame and power

Readers looking for thoughtful nonfiction by and about Black women can also explore more African and Black women’s stories from Cassava Republic Press.

An essential collection of Black women’s essays

At once intimate and expansive, Dancing With Jinns does more than reveal what has been kept private. It examines why certain subjects become taboo and who benefits when women are discouraged from speaking about them.

The collection offers recognition to readers who have lived with similar silences. It also provides an illuminating entry point for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Black women’s experiences across cultures.

These essays are challenging, compassionate and urgently relevant. They make room for complexity instead of easy judgement and turn private experience into shared knowledge.

About the editors

Ellah Wakatama

Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is an editor, publisher and influential advocate for African writing. She is Editor at Large at Canongate Books, a senior research fellow at the University of Manchester and Chair of the Caine Prize for African Writing.

Her extensive publishing career and commitment to African literature bring depth and authority to the collection. Read more about Ellah Wakatama through the Royal Society of Literature.

Layla Mohamed

Layla Mohamed is a Senior Editor at Cassava Republic Press, where she edits literary fiction and creative non-fiction. She studied Law at Oxford University before moving into publishing. Mohamed edited The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson, winner of the Discover at the British Book Awards and a shortlisted title for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She also edited An Unusual Grief by Yewande Omotoso, a critically acclaimed novel exploring grief and family secrets in South Africa. She is the Fiction Editor at Adi Magazine and she is a regular speaker on writing and the publishing industry, having appeared on panels at Africa Writes and the Black British Book Festival in the UK, and the LITERAL Festival in Spain.

Edited with literary precision and cultural sensitivity, Dancing With Jinns is an essential book for readers who believe that confronting silence can create understanding, resistance and change.