num_pages: 296
description: During the 1950s and 60s in the Congo city of Kinshasa there emerged young urban male gangs known as Bills or Yankees. Modeling themselves on the images of the iconic American cowboy from Hollywood film the Bills sought to negotiate lives lived under oppressive economic social and political conditions. They developed their own style subculture and slang and as Ch. Didier Gondola shows engaged in a quest for manhood through bodybuilding marijuana violent sexual behavior and other transgressive acts. Gondola argues that this street culture became a backdrop for Congo-Zaire's emergence as an independent nation and continues to exert powerful influence on the country's urban youth culture today.
language: English
title: Tropical Cowboys: Westerns, Violence, and Masculinity in Kinshasa
publisher: Indiana University Press