Nigeria's Queer Literature Offers a New Way of Looking At Blackness

interview

Queering the Black Atlantic: Transgender Spaces in Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater is a paper by Rocío Cobo-Piñero. It considers Emezi's award-winning semi-autobiographical novel about Ada, who is an ogbanje, a spirit born in a human body. It uses the novel to suggest ways in which emerging African queer literature could disrupt traditional, heterosexist readings of the world. The paper specifically addresses Paul Gilroy's 1993 text The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Aretha Phiri interviewed the author.

Aretha Phiri: Where queer bodies in Africa continue to be violently oppressed, what are the implications of a book like Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater?

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