In this riveting excavation of the relationship between women's football and queer expressions of gender in Ghana, Anima Adjepong deftly demonstrates how sport can be a liberatory space of gender expansiveness and queer sexuality, even as it is weaponized by forces bent on oppression and tinged with the dregs of colonialism. Ghana's Black Queens is a must-read book that doubles as a dose of inspiration ahead of the 2027 World Cup. Adjepong shows how sport-and the world's most popular sport, football-can be a crucial zone of political fightback.

Jules Boykoff, Pacific University, USA

Anima Adjepong has written a groundbreaking, decolonial queer account of women's football in Africa. They tell the story of Ghana's women footballers as they fight for recognition, confront homophobia and patriarchal power, and use football to challenge, and hopefully reimagine, the nation itself.

Sean Jacobs, founder of Africa Is a Country and Eleven Named People

Vital and overdue reckoning! The book unearths the buried history of working-class women who broke through patriarchal containment to pioneer Ghana's beautiful game. It traces a story of community, friendship, sacrifice, and the thousands of journeys that laid the foundations of the Black Queens and made the team the national pride it is today. Arriving amid renewed heteronationalism and resurgent anti-queer colonial logics across Ghana and the continent, it asks who nationalism is for, whose labour it exploits, and whose belonging it denies. It lays bare the intertwined forces sidelining the women's game and foreclosing bodily autonomy, and the solidarity needed to resist them. This is fair play in its deepest sense: these living heroines must be seen, credited, and honoured. It sets the record straight, reclaiming an essential chapter of Ghana's history.

Rosebell Kagumire, Pan-African feminist writer

As women's football rises in popularity, Ghana's Black Queens is a necessary read to understand the systemic oppression of women in sport. Adjepong pulls back the curtain on the journey of Ghana's senior women's program. This book is thorough, compassionate and clear. It is not only a recounting of talented women who love football, it is about gender expansiveness, policed bodily autonomy and scrutinized sexuality, lack of familial support, and abuse and harassment of players from all levels. As Adjepong lays out the traumas and experiences of the women working to establish professional women's football in Ghana, they emphasize the love, community and friendship fostered by the Black Queens, and all the regal women who came before them punctuated with national pride. Adjepong reminds us that football and sisterhood were keys to survival, both on and off the pitch.

This fantastically layered work reminds us how much the football family has to do to ensure safety, stability and respect for footballers all over the world. This is an essential read for those who love the beautiful game and should understand the context behind women's football in Ghana and the ongoing challenges they face.

Shireen Ahmed, journalist and award-winning sports activist