Lyn Ossome’s beautifully written book is a richly documented, thoroughly researched discussion of the connections between class, ethnicity, and sexual violence in the context of Kenya’s democratization. One of its outstanding features is the use of a historical materialist framework to problematize the ethnicization of laboring women and to account for the production of postcolonial subjects who commit and experience sexual violence. She argues that physical and material violence are key starting points for a feminist inquiry and deeper interrogation of the historical production of violence that persists in the contemporary liberal, democratic, and postcolonial state. In doing so, she presents an unremitting exploration of questions that are usually sidelined in scholarship on democratization.

Manali Desai, University of Cambridge

Lyn Ossome is at the forefront of the younger generation of African scholars, inter-disciplinary in orientation, determined to understand African realities in historical terms, and driven by a deep sense of social justice. States of Violence is an outstanding example of this new scholarship.

Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, Columbia University

This is a piece of work that presents a highly sophisticated take on the layered nature of sexual violence as a facet of cracks in democratic practice in Kenya. It is a great resource for African Feminist theorization on the gendered nature of and state formation in postcolonial Africa.

Josephine Ahikire, Makerere University