Queer Africa

Description

Queer Africa is a collection of unapologetic, tangled, tender, funny, bruising and brilliant stories about the many ways in which we love each other on the continent � In these unafraid stories of intimacy, sweat, betrayal and restless confidences, we accompany characters into caf�s, tattoo salons, the barest of bedrooms, coldly gleaming spaces into which the rich withdraw, unlit streets, and their own deepest interiors.

Sujets

• Littérature Africaine
• Littérature Africaine

Informations

• Publié par: MaThoko's Books
• Date de parution: 13 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780620924474
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Publication © MaThoko’s Books 2013 Copyright © is held by the author of each story
First published in 2013 by MaThoko’s Books PO Box 31719, Braamfontein, 2017, South Africa
ISBN : 978-1-920590-33-8
Cover art: Carla Kreuser Book and cover design: Monique Cleghorn
Printed and bound by Creda Communications, Cape Town
Set in 11 pt on 15 pt Adobe Caslon
MaThoko’s Books is an imprint of Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action ( GALA ).
The publication of this book was made possible by core support from The Atlantic Philanthropies.
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
1 Pelican Driver | DAVINA OWOMBRE
2 Poisoned Grief | EMIL RORKE
3 The Bath | WAMUWI MBAO
4 Chapter Thirteen | K. SELLO DUIKER
5 Lower Main | TO MOLEFE
6 Impepho | ROGER DIAMOND
7 All Covered Up | DOLAR VASANI
8 The Filth of Freedom | RAHIEM WHISGARY
9 Jambula Tree | MONICA ARAC DE NYEKO
10 Leaving Civvy Street | ANNIE HOLMES
11 Asking for It | NATASHA DISTILLER
12 The Big Stick | RICHARD DE NOOY
13 Sethunya Likes Girls Better | WAME MOLEFHE
14 A Boy is a Boy is a … | BARBARA ADAIR
15 Chief of the Home | BEATRICE LAMWAKA
16 Pinch | MARTIN HATCHUEL
17 In the Way She Glides | MERCY MINAH
18 Rock | LINDIWE NKUTHA
Glossary
Author Biographies
Acknowledgements
Queer Africa is a collection of charged, tangled, tender, unapologetic, funny, bruising and brilliant stories about the many ways in which we love one another on the continent. The collection includes exquisitely written work by some of the great African writers of this century – K. Sello Duiker, Monica Arac de Nyeko, Beatrice Lamwaka and Richard de Nooy – as well as new voices that map out a haunting, intricate, complex Africa. Phrases like Wamuwi Mbao’s ‘She looks like you, when nobody’s watching her’ and Sello Duiker’s narrator’s ‘gentle sadness that doesn’t take you all at once’ share with us not only the aftermath of sex, but moments where the world opens itself. In these unafraid stories of intimacy, sweat, betrayal and restless confidences, we accompany characters into cafes, tattoo salons, the barest of bedrooms, the coldly glinting spaces into which the rich withdraw, unlit streets, and their own deepest interiors. We learn much in these gloriously achieved stories about love and sex, but perhaps more about why we hurt and need one another.
– GABEBA BADEROON
PREFACE
The arts allow us to consider experiences radically different from our own in ways that other forms of representation (research reports, the media, etc.) can’t. In imaginative space, dominant narratives hold less sway; possibilities we haven’t considered suggest themselves. We are confronted with our prejudices and preconceptions. And we may discover in others our own unrecognised selves. It is our intention with this anthology to productively disrupt, through the art of literature, the potent discourses currently circulating on what it means to be African, to be queer and to be an African creative writer.
One of the earliest conversations we had with GALA was about how we could capture the widest range of stories – female and male, cis- and trans-gender, urban and rural, contemporary and historical, joyful and troubled – without compromising literary values. In a later discussion, we committed to our interest in how a range of writers might respond to and represent queer Africa by deciding that writers need not identify as queer to qualify for the anthology. We did stipulate that writers must identify as African, and we allowed them to decide for themselves what this means. We are proud now to showcase diverse writers from the African creative writing community, reflecting and imagining for us the kaleidoscopic variety of queer lives on our continent.
Queer Africa: New and Collected Fiction celebrates the diversity and fluidity of queer and African identifications and expressions. For instance, it features a number of stories about queer men written by women, and by men about queer women. Indeed, many stories ignore the national, gender and racial identity boundaries of their writers. These writers have made courageous literary journeys, and their stories challenge assumptions about what it means to legitimately represent a particular human experience. Something else we like about the anthology is that some of the stories renew overrepresented aspects of African life by looking at them through a queer lens. “Chief of the Home”, one of the highlights of the collection, examines conflict in semi-rural Uganda from the perspective of a trans protagonist. It is neither a war story nor a trans story, but a unique queer space in which to consider the impact of violent conflict on individuals.
When making our final selections we decided to include some previously published stories. This not only allowed us to provide a wider range of content but also to feature stories from more countries. But still, Queer Africa ’s geographic range is limited. On the one hand, our publicity was constrained by time and money. On the other, we were puzzled by limited responses from some of the writing communities we did reach out to. We are pleased, though, that including these previously published stories – some of them widely celebrated, like “Jambula Tree” – allows them to be re-read in a context that foregrounds their queerness.
It has taken three years to collect and assemble the anthology. What sort of queer, African, literary and advocacy space is it entering in 2013? In parts of Africa, stronger and stronger queer voices are making themselves heard – the voices of activists and artists, of communities and politicians. In other parts, terrifying violence, often sanctioned by the state, plagues queer people. Queer Africa will confront the noisy political rhetoric that positions queerness as unnatural, amoral and un-African with intimate stories about individual lives, deeply embedded in the complexities of their contexts, and crafted by some of Africa’s finest writers.
May you be provoked and inspired by the queer African imaginings we bring you here.
– KAREN MARTIN AND MAKHOSAZANA XABA JOHANNESBURG, MARCH 2013
INTRODUCTION
Karen Martin and Makhosazana Xaba have achieved an extraordinary feat in bringing together this very welcome volume of stories that imagine queer Africa in such diverse and exciting ways. It is a beautiful and necessary project that presents a shared vision across the pages of the book whilst allowing the individual short stories, and the two excerpts from novels, to stand completely in their own stead. A shared vision is not premised on agreement or similarity, as these stories show; the editors of the collection gesture towards a political, aesthetic and imaginative community that is not premised on sameness. After all, each of these stories offers a slice of what it means to be queer in Africa because, in a direct sense, that description and call were what the authors responded to or what their stories suggested, prompting invitations to publish here.
One of the implied questions in this volume that is sometimes directly addressed, and obliquely gestured towards at other times, is the exact meaning of “queer” when it rubs up against “Africa”. The stories themselves show the very many ways in which being queer in Africa, a queer Africa and queering Africa are not the same thing across time, borders, and internal boundaries, even as we read “queer” as always concerned with identity and a deliberate perspective in/on the world. The framing of this anthology in these terms brings together a range of world narratives about shared sexual, gender and political identification. Queer Africa , as a name for this collection, also comes with the many ways in which “queer” is equally embraced and questioned by those it seeks to include and/or speak on behalf of. In a very direct sense, here we have what Gabeba Baderoon has called a “leaking of meaning”, producing not a tidy putting together, but sometimes a coherent sense of belonging, and at other times a provisional one. Meaning leaks here because the many discussions and debates on the use of queer in African contexts are varied and on-going. These debates have the discoveries, frustrations, excitement and anger that come with all politically difficult conversations worth having. While some use the label comfortably, others are worried about whether it adequately speaks usefully to contexts outside the geographical politics of its emergence. Does its use give credence to or help challenge the homophobic claims of importation? Does it contest African hegemonies by using terms of reference that come from a place that paid no attention to queer his/her/hirstories on the continent? Others use it selectively and carefully, as shorthand, or under erasure, depending on what political work they are invested in doing across temporalities and geographies. As I continue to use “queer” in this introduction, I do so mindful of these contradictions and questions. I also use it as someone whose own self-identification does not stand outside of this embattlement, and no amount of quoting Judith Butler even begins to address the problem. I write also aware that there are probably as many “queers” who use it interchangeably with LGTBI as there are who insist on the two meaning very different things. Some of these difficulties can be glimpsed in Queer African Reader, edited by Sokari Ekine and Hakima Abbas, as well as in Hakima Abbas and Jessica Horn’s Movement Building Boot Camp for Queer African Activists. These are not the only places.
Let me return more directly to the stories.
Read separately, these narratives offer testimony to the universality/multiversality of queer subjects and imaginations, as they invit