ABSTRACT
Key themes in existing research are sex work as metaphor, sex workers’ artistic representations, historical shifts in modes of representation, and moving beyond the reproduction of inequalities in cultural representations of the sex industry. Cultural representations can shed light on the intersections of race, class, and gender that inform women’s decision-making processes vis-a-vis commercial sex in extremely complex and often conflicted ways. Powerful gender ideologies underlie cultural representations of the sex industry in ways that directly impact social services provision and other assistance measures by positioning sex workers as victim/criminals in need of simultaneous punitive sanctions and therapeutic assistance. Finally, the part presents an overview of this book. The book examines the construction of “the prostitute” in six African works of fiction and the accompanying popular cultural attitudes towards sex workers that these works seek to either affirm or subvert.
