Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan & Rafeeat Aliyu (eds), She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak

Summary

She Called Me Woman: Nigeria's Queer Women Speak is a collection of twenty-five stories by different Nigerian women and trans-women from different locations in Nigeria as well as a few Nigerian women raised in the United States of America and Spain. The stories are accounts of their various experiences as trans-women and women with alternate sexual orientations. The writers, whose ages range between 20 and 43, are located at different geographical regions of Nigeria. Twelve of the twenty-five authors are located in Lagos or Abuja, four are in Plateau State, and one each is located in Zamfara, Kwara, Imo, Kaduna, Oyo and Ondo States; two are in the United States of America, and one is in Spain. As a way of protecting the interests and images of the authors, their names are not disclosed, but they are identified by initials such as JP, TQ, OF, QM, HK, FR, DK, etc.

The stories reveal the authors’ diverse backgrounds, interests, challenges and expectations, as well as perceptions of themselves. The titles of the stories offer significant clues to the concerns of most of the writers. Such titles are ‘I Only Admire Girls’, ‘That is What I Have Been Missing’, ‘I am a Proud Lesbian’, ‘Living a Double Life’, ‘I Want to be Myself Around People I Care About’, ‘To Anyone Hated, Be Strong’, ‘Your Sexuality Does Not Define Who You Are’, ‘Same-Sex Relationships are a Choice’, ‘This is not our World’ and ‘Why Do I Have to Ask You to Consider Me Human?’ and more. The different sentiments expressed in the titles highlight the authors’ attitudes towards being a lesbian or a bisexual or a transgender person, all of whom are often described as queer women. The stories add to the corpus of expressions of the LGBT community members.

It is significant that many of the stories indicate religion as the prime factor that conditions the minds of the people who unleash on the queer women indictment, then isolation and then rejection. Having been raised in families that observed strict religious principles, the differences between the expectations of the religions and the queerness of the writers often generate the tensions that are portrayed in ‘I Can Still Live More’, ‘I Pray that Everyone has Forgotten’ and ‘If you Want Lesbian, Go to Room 24’.