Rivers of Change: Offering Water as a Medium of African Queer Knowledge

• In Event: African Sexualities and Textual Practice

Description for Program

Embracing My Shadow: Growing Up Lesbian in Nigeria by Unoma Azuah is the first memoir to be published in print by a Nigerian lesbian woman. Waters and rivers are central motifs in this text. This paper argues that the river is situated as a site of conflict between Igbo cosmology and Catholic values regarding queer sexuality. On the one hand, Azuah demonstrates a close relationship to the river goddess Onishe. She has recurring dreams of the goddess throughout her life and learns from her grandmother—who worships the goddess—that Onishe is an androgynous and genderfluid spirit. This belief system makes room for Azuah to accept herself as a lesbian. On the other hand, Azuah is also a devoted Catholic who seeks to find home in the church, where she struggles through religiously fueled homophobic violence. Her Anglican mother forces her to undergo a sexual conversion ritual, which takes place in a rural area and, for a significant amount of time, in a river. Using water as a central metaphor, this talk explores the ways in which Azuah is able to syncretize her indigenous beliefs with her Catholic beliefs to embrace herself. Embracing My Shadow opens up a much-needed conversation about the changing conversations and increasing visibility around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex lives on the African continent. By (re)claiming indigenous Igbo cosmology as a home for women who love women, Azuah shows that same-gender desire is neither un-African nor ungodly. This paper places African feminist literature on pre-colonial Nigerian sexual and gender practices in conversation with contemporary LGBTQ African literature, pushing us to further decolonize and de-Westernize our concept of queer(ness). Queer is not just about who one desires, but a radical politic to guide us on a path of spiritual, epistemological, and global liberation.

Author

• Toluwani Roberts