Affiliative Kinship and Agency in On Black Sisters’ Street

Although multiple Black feminist movements have acted against the invisibility and/or (re-)victimization of Black women, stereotypes about the Black woman as a hypersexual object of male pleasure prevail, especially in the context of sex work in Europe, which is shaped by heavy normative implications and imbued with narratives of inferiority and shame. Nigerian-Belgian author Chika Unigwe, in her novel On Black Sisters’ Street, rewrites dominant narratives about Black women in prostitution and introduces new perspectives on agency and community-building in sex work. With the help of spatial analyses and postcolonial as well as Black feminist theory, this chapter argues that the novel evokes affiliative kinship as an essential survival strategy for the female characters presented in the novel. The chapter shows how these characters regain their agency through voicing their stories and claiming diverse spaces. On Black Sisters’ Street thus puts the women center stage and subverts normatively defined and stereotyped narratives about Black women’s (involuntary) participation in sex work.