This focus piece works on a micro-level and is based on a qualitative study with four differently-abled young Black African women living at a university hostel in South Africa. The piece proceeds through their stories, taking as a starting point that ethnographies of the particular' offer a critical and intimate window into how these young women self-interpret and attempt to (re)claim their sexuality. The young women's excavated narratives testify to how both sexuality' and disability' have been co-constructed within the able-bodied community, which in a sense works to erase' their sexuality and render them both asexual and sexually invisible. The recovered narratives also reveal that disability is deeply imbricated within gender and gendered regimes of aesthetics. The narratives further expose fissures in their reclamation stories, as they also show up instances of internalised oppression' alongside other life-affirming aspirations and ideas of romance, love, sexual liaisons and motherhood.
