Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia Wieringa have compiled thirteen essays from a group of historians, sociologists, and anthropologists who discuss same-sex desire among women outside the West, exploring female eroticism in such societies and cultures as India, Polynesia, Latin America, Native North America, and southern Africa.Female Desires offers compelling evidence against the commonly accepted notion that non-Western women are generally passive victims of male domination and compulsory heterosexuality. It also dispells the idea that same-sex female desire is rooted in Western neo-imperialist culture: contributors show non-Western women to be active agents of their own sexual identities. Essays include Giti Thadani on lesbian desire in ancient and modern India, Saskia Wieringa on butch-femme social types in Indonesia and Peru, and Norma Mogrovejo on the lesbian movement in Mexico.In a larger sense, the essays attempt to look past the ethnocentric categories in which sexuality, identity, and culture are often considered.

Evelyn Blackwood is assistant professor of anthropology and women's studies at Purdue University. She is the editor of The Many Faces of Homosexuality: Anthropological Approaches to Homosexual Behavior. Saskia Wieringa is a senior lecturer in women's studies at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. She is the author of The Politicization of Gender Relations in Indonesia: Women's Organizations and the New Order, coauthor of Women, The Environment, and Sustainable Development: Toward a Theoretical Synthesis, and editor of several other books.