In Chris Dunton’s “Wheyting be dat?: The Treatment of Homosexuality in African Literature,” he writes of what is chiefly the monothematic narrative of queerness in African literature as a form of foreign-centred discourse, where mostly queer characters are seen as aliens invading the African space, and which homosexuality and LGBTQIA+ are a sort of Euro-American amoral cultural institution imposed on Africans. With the publication of Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows in 2005, a novel that breaks the cruise of the monothematic portrayal of homosexual characters, we are able to witness a Nigerian queer character whose image and sexuality is not situated within a foreign culture.
When women struggle to break the chains of sexism, one can only imagine what it means when they’re queer, and African, too. It means being disadvantaged from three corners. Women, therefore, have to assert their feminine values against sexism, and the queers among them are struggling against the homophobic fixations of society.
In spite of the rise in queer narratives in fiction showing the psychological trauma, physical violence, and systematic erasure of homosexuals, most people think that these narratives are a postmodern irrelevance of a global anxiety of the Euro-American culture crossing the seas over to the African continent. This is where Wedged Between God & Man: Queer West African Women’s Stories, a nonfiction anthology of twenty-three stories, edited by Unoma Azuah and Claire Ba, becomes pivotal. It shows us that the discourse, and horror, of homophobia is not a global fashion trend exploited by African writers seeking Western sympathy to commercialise their art. That queerness is the true story of real-life people; people living close to us, people who are our friends and sisters, passing through unimaginable situations. No better way to express this than Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s introduction to the anthology:
In light of the increasing threat of the criminalisation of Queer African identities, non-fiction stories about the lives of lesbian, bisexual, and trans women are even more important because they document that we exist, have always existed, and will continue not just to merely live but thrive despite the hostile contexts that many of us continue to navigate. In spite of homophobia we find ways to live, love, and experience community.
Wedged Between God & Man is a protest and celebration of sexual fluidity and resilience in the face of homophobia. The anthology explores the link between lesbianism and feminism in its instinctual connection and the stories in it break-away from middle-class Euro-American feminism.
In the first story, “Growing Wings,” Olaedo Obinze employs the metaphor of birds, from her experience in the village after her mother sends her to her grandmother to be “tamed.” Her mother who feels her daughter’s “feathers needed to be plucked,” like the birds in her grandmother’s compound, sends her away when she finds out she (Obinze) and a neighbour’s daughter are entering into each other “like padlock and key.” Living with her grandmother, Obinze gets “tamed” as she purges herself of her sexuality. She shows us how queer people are forced to live in pretence because “sometimes, it is a survival technique” in heteronormative societies. The story highlights the institution of violence as a corollary of homophobia, and the crisis of understanding basic humanity in a homophobic society, where someone says “killing was bad, but homosexuality is worse”—such words uttered after a man kills his daughter because she comes out to own her queer sexuality.
Lariba Johnson recounts loneliness on the journey to accept the Self. In her “A Lonely Journey Through Self-Acceptance,” Johnson tells us that “[a] home that is supposed to provide me with comfort, peace and sanity is unfortunately the place I fear to live my truth as a non-binary person.” This extends beyond the family unit to the entire country, affecting her so much that she is left in doubt and confusion: “This doubtful and confused state has rendered me questioning my sexuality and finding it difficult to reconcile my sexuality with faith. This keeps messing with my physical and psychological wellbeing.”
Being queer and woman
Delasi Sanenu’s “Shouting Myself Hoarse” and Unoma Azuah’s “Eyes” not only show the loneliness and rejection that comes with being lesbian but the double flames burning women from both ends of their gender and sexuality. Sanenu tells the story of her mother’s—and indeed, the entire society’s—belief, about a woman’s place in society:
My mum tells me all the time how as a woman, no matter how many degrees I obtained, or achievements I clocked in life, I am still nothing without a man. Then she refers me to a friend of the family who always takes up the expenses of family events but is never consulted when major decisions are to be made because she is unmarried. I tell her I wouldn’t mind if it were me, and then would come the part of her spiel that irks me the most, society . . . (Emphasis mine).
In “Eyes,” Azuah shows how even an intelligent and practical woman like her former lover, Habiba, can be influenced by society and religion into awkward situations. She meets Habiba at a reading in Abuja. Azuah’s first inkling of Habiba’s enthusiasm and brilliance rouses her when the latter responds to her question—“Have you ever been with a woman?” with a rhetorical answer, “Who hasn’t been with a woman?” Revealing lesbianism as an instinctual construct among women. Lois Tyson explains the complex nature of women loving women from a historical perspective, that
[L]esbian identity is not restricted to the sexual domain but consists of directing the bulk of one’s attention and emotional energy to other women and having other women as one’s primary source of emotional sustenance and psychological support. That is, a lesbian is a woman-identified woman.”
This does not invalidate the sexual domain of lesbianism, but Habiba’s answer shows the conviviality of lesbian identity and complexity; women’s tendency of being more expressive and affectionate to each other. Nine months into the relationship, Habiba tells Azuah that she wants a child. Being a Muslim, all suggestions of IVF and sperm donor Azuah raises are jettisoned because “She [Habiba] needed to marry a man before she could have a baby.” To be understood to have been married, by the expected standards of where she comes from, to have whatsoever baby. Sanenu’s story and her mother’s belief are reinforced by Habiba’s situation, on how what a woman wants, or her relevance, depends on a man.
Exorcising queers and physical violence as acts of homophobia
Homosexuality has been projected as a sort of demonic infliction that has to be exorcised. Such exorcisms, sometimes, require physical beatings or the ostracisation of the individual. Abalawa Solime shows this cruelty suffered by lesbians in her story, “The End of the Tunnel.” Her folks see her non-heterosexuality as a spiritual problem. They believe “[a] demon had taken over my body. They would have difficulty removing it and only an armored exorcism could save… It [her lesbianism] was so exceptional that drastic measures had to be taken, so that the demon in my body could not remain there. I had to be freed from its satanic grip. My life and that of the community were in danger.”
The church and her parents go as far as torturing her, where she is locked up for four days without food. Besides this inhumane act, the psychological pressure that trails it is more troubling for her. The entire society believes she is a curse and would bring bad luck. And they make it a rule, especially, that young girls should be wary of her so that they would not be “contaminated.”
Gsan Rolifane’s “Javalin: High Voltage” is most explicit in narrating the physical violence against her queerness as her father vows to end her life. She asks a vital question: “So, a parent’s love stopped at sexuality?” A motherless girl, her father raised her singlehandedly. Her ex-lover, a woman who is older than her, frames her by making them to talk about her sexuality, while unknown to her, her father is at the other end listening. When he arrives home, he inflicts a machete wound on her, and few months later, he hits her with his car and leaves a promise to end her life.
As is usual for several queer people, with the homophobia and threat that forces them to hide their identity, self-denial starts to set in. As shown in the works of fiction in Dibia’s Walking with Shadows and Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees, Rolifane gets to a point of self-denial: “I wanted to get away from this, perhaps, evil and abominable act as my father said.” This is the kind of damage that violence is capable of, as seen in Ijeoma and Andrea’s willingness to deny their true sexuality in the face of physical and psychological violence in Dibia’s Walking With Shadows, and Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees respectively. Except that this time, it is happening to real humans.
What is incisive about Wedged Between God & Man is how most of the writers end the grief, pain, anger, and plea, with hope. Claire Ba’s approach is a sort of self-acceptance that invalidates the assumptions of the rhetoric that portrays homosexuality as un-African and unnatural. She tells us that an argument with her mother was followed by “a lengthy monologue about religious and cultural values that do not align with my supposed homosexual tendencies, which by the way will never be tolerated.” We also see from Obinze’s ending sentence: “I, too, am beginning to grow wings.” To Solime’s “Although the picture looks bleak, I believe there is hope.” The writers believe that a time will come when women can love the way it pleases them, and not by how heterosexuals want or demand them to.◙
Oko Owi Ocho has a BA English. He is the founder and team lead of Afrika-Writes, the Creative Director for Benue Poetry Troupe, and Programmes Manager, SEVHAGE. He is an award-winning poet, performance artist, and scholar. He was longlisted for the Nigerian Student Poetry Prize (2017), earned an NSPP Award of Excellence (2018) for his poem “Zeyani,” and was the second prize winner of the Korea Nigeria Poetry Prize (2018). He is currently researching fourth-generation Nigerian poets.