Response by the author

Abstract

The relationship between love and the bathhouse, which are both ‘queered’ through relatedness and defamiliarization, needs further interrogation. If the bathhouse makes possible the expression of ‘provider love’ (p. 217), how is this space different from other intimate or domestic spaces such as the kitchen, where the same form of love is expressed? In relying on the notion of queerness, is it possible that the potential for theorizing the everydayness of the bathhouse and its related practices is foreclosed? Rather than the space being queered by love, perhaps its multiple possibilities and opportunities suggest that the bathhouse is already a queer space. Could this be a useful point of departure? The third aspect related to friendship pertains to sugarmotherhoodand its framing as part of ‘queer family networks’ (p. 219). Queer kinship and the idea of a chosen family affords different types of family structure and collectives that are not reliant onmarital ties orgenealogical relations.The sharingpractices andnetworksof friendshipsof ‘knowingwomen’gobeyond thenotionof the chosen family.The attachment to this queer frame of family appears to be limiting in the context of the women in Ghana. Sugar motherhood, as a sort of motherhood, extends the notion of provider love. However, this extension is foreclosed by the need for these relationships to be ‘disguised much more carefully’ (p. 269). How, then, can we make sense of sugar motherhood as motherhoodwhen it requires negotiationswith genealogical motherhoodorheteronormative expectations?Might therebe aneed to challenge conceptual assumptions about motherhood in the African context? We could take a leaf out of the pages of these ‘knowing women’ and attempt to live our lives on our own terms, without the limits of trying to fit into frameworks and paradigms that reshape our existence. Through these women’s voices and lives, Dankwa delivers a rich, excitingly messy, perfectly wayward and full life of African women’s genius.