Black British Bloggers kindly gifted me with Sensuous Knowledge by Minna Salami a few weeks back.
Although interested in the bio of Minna, being an award-winning blogger of Ms Afropolitan, I wasn’t really sure what her book was about, so was keen to find out…
About Minna Salami
Sensuous Knowledge is written by Minna Salami, a British writer of Nigerian and Finish descent, who has lived in many countries.
Born and raised in Nigeria, to then migrate to Sweden in her teen years and has also spent some time in New York, but is now UK based.
Minna’s experience of living in different countries and her Nigerian and Finnish inheritance places her in a credible position to inform the stance of how women are viewed in both Western and African cultures.
Salami’s wealth of experiences form up this black feminist approach to make it into digestible content for everyone, really.
What is Sensuous Knowledge?
Sensuous Knowledge is defined by Minna as ‘the marriage of emotional intelligence with intellectual skill‘. She explains in the book that the term ‘sensuous‘ was first coined by poet John Milton.
My Favourite Chapter
‘of Liberation‘ is the second chapter in this book. Lauryn Hill is one of my favourite music artists, so seeing her first mentioned in this chapter was a pleasant surprise.
Here, Minna depicts the way in which people who challenge society’s norms, unapologetically express themselves. Ms. Lauryn is used as one example to cleverly illustrate this.
African Influence
In this piece of literature, Minna exemplifies ideas of what she coins as, Europatriarchal Knowledge. This is the perspective that all dominant systems in society are influenced predominantly by western patriarchy. This is the basic foundation from which the book begins.
Black Feminism
Salami also explains how black feminism is unique in its approach to any other version of feminism. She details it is the only one that addresses race, class, and gender. Minna recognizes black women in western societies as being the most to suffer because they are often oppressed in all of these aforementioned categories.
Takeaways From Sensuous Knowledge
Sensuous Knowledge reminded me of A-Level Sociology. Not only because it mentioned many theorists, including Simone de Beauvoir and Karl Marx, who I first discovered during studying this in college, but also the academic and critical approach addressing the structures in society and how this affects the functioning of society.
I could definitely see this book added to the Sociology curriculum today. I think it offers a unique and relevant approach.
Although I may not agree with everything said in this book, there is a great deal that I found interesting.
Through reading this literature, I learned more about African culture and belief systems there. It also helped me understand more the structure that has built the society in which I live in relation to patriarchy and how this has an effect on the way we view things, even in the subtlest way.
I really like the idea that Salami has delved into how intellectual knowledge is often championed above emotional intelligence in society and dismantles how this is a problem. She critically assesses how emotional intelligence holds significant value in flourishing as humans and that it should be treated with much more value than it often is.
I also enjoyed the exploration of etymology throughout the book, both through the coining of new terms and discovering pre-existing words through the vast vocabulary of this book.
In Summary
Sensuous Knowledge by Minna Salami critically details the origins of power as we know it. It assesses power systems on a global scale through Minna’s experience of living in different corners of the earth.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the coupling of both emotional and intellectual knowledge. This piece of literature deconstructs the idea of one being more superior than the other and instead proposed that both are equally important.
I believe the subtitle of the book to live up to its name. It is indeed a black feminist approach, but it is also for everyone.
For more books by inspiring black females, check out this book review of Hustle by Patricia Bright.
Bonus
I’ve paired up with Cornerfold, a UK based clothing brand offering unique t-shirts with inspiring quotes embedding into them. They gifted me with their tee that states a Chinua Achebe quote ‘my weapon is my literature’ which I think neatly fits in with the theme of this post. They have other collections available on their site. For 15% off any of their t-shirts, use my code REMIREPORTS15 at checkout. Please note if you use this code, I will use a commission from this, at no extra cost to yourself, but an acknowledgment of a referral sale.
