COLORSxSTUDIOS

AA: Both you and the protagonist of your debut novel, Freshwater (2018) identify as ọgbanje, a trickster Igbo spirit born into a human body. How does your work engage with African traditional religion?

AE: Freshwater feels like a blueprint for all the work I’ve gone on to create. Writing it was when I really started to think deeply about the idea of Indigenous realities. It’s a concept I came across while reading Malidoma Patrice Somé’s book Of Water and Spirit (1994) in which he talks in depth about colonialism. When we think of colonialism, we think that people came and replaced our language, culture, and religion. What Somé points out is that they actually replaced our reality. Things that were real for millennia became unreal because white people showed up and violently said that they were make-believe.

I’m good friends with Ann Daramola, a writer and scholar who’s currently working on a theory that there’s no such thing as African traditional religions. What we call traditional religions are actually Indigenous ways of being. I agree with her on that. People didn’t practice a religion that was separate from their lives. Everything was connected, their religion was their existence. Colonialism broke that.

AE: As I became more public about not having a gender and being queer – again, flesh terms – it really changed my relationship with being able to go back home. I can’t live in Nigeria anymore because it’s not safe: physically or psychologically, especially given my visibility. I see myself as being in exile, which I’ve come to terms with. I know now that I can make my home in different places, but of course I’ll always feel a sense of grief and loss.

Queer Nigerians are often exiled from our culture. We don’t have access to so many things that straight Nigerians take for granted. One of the most common heartbreaks is realizing that you can never have a traditional wedding. Your family will never come together for you the way they would if you were straight. You won’t get to have the big owambe with a queer partner. It’s really crushing when you realize all the things you’ll miss out on just because you’re queer.

AA: And then there’s reckoning with the privilege of mobility. I think a lot about queer folks back home and the social, psychological, physical, and legislative violence they face. 

AE: For me, the privilege of mobility has been something that’s difficult to come to terms with. The only reason I was able to leave Nigeria was because my mother was adamant that her children would not stay in the country. She worked very hard to plan our exit.

AE: I was materially helped by other queer writers. The turning point in my career was when Binyavanga Wainaina read my manuscript and took me under his wing. It’s not lost on me that there are a lot of cis-het African writers who have the institutional power to do things like that, but choose not to. For me, they’re shockingly neglecting their responsibility. Especially for queer writers in Africa, [this industry] is not a meritocracy. It’s about who you know and what gates you open for people. Once Binyavanga helped me on my way, I took it upon myself to pay it forward.

In Dear Senthuran, I talk a lot about being a god. When they read this, many people immediately think of it as a hierarchical structure. For them, it’s as if I’m saying I’m better than everyone else. In Igbo villages, this isn’t the case. Deities work for the people. There’s even a proverb that tells people to show deities the wood that they are carved from if they act up. That’s a threat! Deities are in service to the community, and if they no longer function in that way, people destroy their shrines. This is how I see my position in the world. I have a degree of power, but I also am in service to a particular community. The purpose of my power is to be of service.