'We're going to stand up': queer literature flourishes in Africa

As a queer teenager growing up in northern Nigeria, Arinze Ifeakandu often found himself looking for books that reflected what he felt.

He combed through the books at home and imagined closer bonds between same-sex characters. He scoured the book stalls in Kano, the city where he lived, hoping to find stories that focused on LGBTQ lives. Later, during furtive visits to Internet cafes, he came across homoromantic stories, but they often focused on lives far removed from his own, featuring closeted white jocks living in snowy cities.

Ifeakandu wanted more. After college, he began writing short stories in which gay men battled loneliness but also found lust and love in conservative, modern Nigeria.

“I have always taken my own desires, my own fears and my own joys seriously,” says Ifeakandu (29). “I knew I wanted to write characters who were queer. That is the only way I will appear on the page.”

Are stories gained traction with readers and critics. In 2017 he became one finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writingand last year his debut collection 'God's Children Are Little Broken Things' was published. won the Dylan Thomas Prize for young writers.

Ifeakandu's work is part of a boom of books by LGBTQ writers across Africa. Long hidden from literature and public life, their stories are now at the center of works that are pushing boundaries across the continent – ​​and receiving critical acclaim.

Major publishers in Europe and the United States are getting in on the action, but so are new publishers across the continent aiming to publish African writers for a primarily African audience.

Thabiso Mahlape, founder of Blackbird Books in South Africa, has published Nakhanea strange writer and artistAnd “Exhale”, a strange anthology. There is so much more that can be done, she said.

The increasing momentum is in line with a broader cultural moment. More and more Africans are talking openly about sex and expressing their sexual and gender identity. Small Pride marches And film festivals are celebrating queer experiences, and some African religious leaders are speaking out support for LGBTQ people.

Young people, who make up the majority of the continent's populationare turning to social media to discuss these books, and the big screen is bringing some of them to the attention of a wider readership: “Jambula tree,” a short story by the Ugandan Monica Arac de Nyeko about the romance between two girls, inspired “Rafiki”, a film that was to be seen in Cannes.

The books – fiction, non-fiction and graphic novels – are also published as a way to push back against it virulent homophobia And anti-gay legislation throughout Africa.

By writing them, the authors hope to captivate readers and challenge the pervasive views that homosexuality is a Western import.

“These books are an invitation to change mindsets and engage in dialogue,” says Kevin Mwachiro, co-author of “We've Been Here,” a nonfiction collection about queer Kenyans aged 50 or older.

“These books say, 'I'm not a victim anymore,'” he said. “It's gays who say: 'We don't want to be tolerated. We want respect.'”

The momentum is new, but books that center queer stories are not without precedent in Africa.

Mohamed Choukri's 1972 novel “Just for bread” caused a furore in Morocco for its depiction of same-sex intimacy and drug use. The enchanting novel from 2010 'In a strange room' by South African Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut, followed by a traveling gay protagonist. And the Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina made global headlines in 2014 when he published a “lost chapter” of his memoirs titled “I'm Gay, Mom.”

But the books now being published, literary experts and publishers say, are expanding Africa's literary canon. These stories – family sagas, thrillers, science fiction and more – delve into the complexities of being queer in Africa and in the diaspora.

Their writers interrogate the silence surrounding queer culture in their own communities.'Love offers no security' edited by Jude Dibia and Olumide F Makanjuola) and the hopes and heartaches of being trans or gender fluid (Akwaeke Emezi's “The Death of Vivek Oji”), intersex (Buki Papillon's “An ordinary miracle”) or lesbian (Trifonia Melibea Obono's “La Bastarda.”)

They explore the intersection of politics, religion and sex (“You Have to Be Gay to Know God” by Siya Khumalo) and the vicissitudes of the secretive gay scene in a bustling metropolis (“No One Dies Yet” by Kobby Ben Ben. )

The books also explore the uncomfortable and difficult process of coming out for conservative parents (Uzodinma Iweala's 'Speak no evil') and imagine entire families whose members are on the LGBTQ continuum (“The Butterfly Jungle” by Diriye Osman). 'More than words', from 2023 illustrated book from Kenyan creative collective The Nest, looks at the daily lives of gay Africans through science fiction and fan fiction.

The authors often use works of fiction to imagine bold new worlds.

Nigerian-American writer Chinelo Okparanta focuses on the coming-of-age story of a young woman during the Nigerian Civil War in Biafra in her 2015 novel 'Under the Udala trees.' The book's main character, Ijeoma, meets Ndidi after he finishes school. Together they attend secret lesbian parties in a church, explore sexual pleasure and even talk about marriage.

Growing up, Okparanta said she read “So Long A Letter,” a 1979 epistolary novel by Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ, in which a widow writes to her old friend, and found herself imagining a world in which the relationship between women might could be more. ,” she said. “I must have been hungry for an African novel with a story like that.”

'Under the Udala Trees' ends on a hopeful note: Ijeoma's mother accepts her and she and Ndidi end up together after her marriage to a man ends. Ndidi even imagines a Nigeria that is safe for gays – a powerful statement considering the book was published a year after Nigeria's former leader. signed a criminal law against gays.

“There has to be room for people to have hope,” Okparanta said.

Nonfiction authors also share their experiences about love and dating, about navigating hostile workplaces and dealing with rejection from their own relatives and finding what they call their “chosen” families. Even as they prioritize confession and catharsis, some books also aim to provide a glimpse into the lives of gay people on the continent.

“Sometimes people think we're just freaks who have sex with each other and there's no love, no desire, no sensuality,” says Chiké Frankie Edozien, whose memoir “Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man” won a Lambda award.

“I wanted truth, honesty and vulnerability,” he said.

Like Edozien, who lives in the Ghanaian capital Accra and regularly visits New York, some queer African writers have moved or established their careers in the West. They use their work to explore not only the communities they left behind, but also those they live in.

This includes Abdellah Taïa, the Paris-based writer originally from Morocco and often considered the first openly gay Arab writer and filmmaker. Taïa has written nine novels that explore what it means to be Muslim, queer, Arab and African. He has also made two films: “Salvation Army,” which is adapted from his novel of the same name, and 'Never Stop Shouting', which addresses his gay cousin.

But so has Taïa's work focused on France and Europe and the anti-migrant and anti-Muslim sentiments that originated there.

“If you're gay and you only think about gay liberation, it means you don't understand how the world functions,” Taïa said. “I am not completely free because other people are not free.”

For many of these authors, publishing has brought public recognition and even appreciation. But some have faced harassment or even death threats.

Edozien hopes the books will inspire younger generations to read a “dignified and balanced” representation of gay Africans.

“Books are very powerful, books are very intimate,” Edozien said. And it's great to have these queer-focused stories “in libraries for decades to come, because the needle has moved, even if it doesn't feel like it.”

Ifeakandu dreams of a future where queer-focused African stories are no longer the exception to the rule.

“I did not choose the country I was born in, any more than I chose my sexuality,” Ifeakandu said. “Hopefully we will get up reluctantly.”