“Growing Wings” sets the tone in the short nonfiction collection “Wedged Between Man and God; Queer West African Women’s Stories.” In “Growing Wings”, the mother of 13-year-old Olaedo Obinze finds out that she is sexually involved with one of the girls in the neighbourhood. As a form of punishment and to correct this perversion, Olaedo’s parents send her to the village, with the father promising to kill her if she is ever involved in a scandal like that again. She was growing wings, and this punishment was supposed to ‘clip her wings’. Like all human stories, her story does not have a good or bad ending. On one hand, her wings grew bigger and stronger, as wings tend to do when you try to clip them. On the other, Olaedo lives the rest of her life with the anxiety from her father’s threat always ringing in her head.
“Wedged Between Man and God” is a collection of nonfiction short stories by Queer women of African origin published in 2023. Unoma Azuah and Claire Ba edit these 23 stories from Nigeria, Ghana, Cote d”Ivoire, Liberia, and Senegal. Ghanaian writer, blogger and feminist Nana DarkoaSekyiamah writes a Foreward that ensures a smooth landing into a delightful read. There are two parts in each copy of “Wedged Between Man and God”; the first has the stories in English, while the second has them in French.
The stories in this collection show what it is like to exist as a Queer woman in Africa. From encounters with family members to stares and run-ins with people in public spaces and to interaction with various institutions in society, this book attempts to provide a diversified and holistic picture of what it means to be Queer in or from Africa.
On the surface – and when viewed holistically – “Wedged Between Man and God” explores the theme of Queerness in Africa. However, an individual assessment of the stories in the book exposes a delta of other themes that give this central theme a spine. Stories in the book explore themes of family, societal pressure, religion, marriage, parenting, culture, conversion scourges, misgendering, the body politics of featurism, acceptance, navigating the closet and being out and proud repeatedly and from different angles. “Wedged Between Man and God” works to provide relatable context for both Queer people of African origin – whatever their individual stories may be – and for random cishet readers looking to understand the reality of existing as a Queer person in or from Africa.
Diction in “Wedged Between Man and God” is simple and practical. From the first few stories, it is obvious the editors played a masterful hand in ensuring that all the stories stay as true to their writers as possible. As a collection of stories by Queer African women and not Queer African women writers,this is a difficult thing to do and but Azuah and Ba manage it so well that the difference only shows when you sift carefully through each story’s narrative prowess. While some employed more skillful descriptions and narrations than others, all the stories firmly and clearly expressed the reality of being and living Queer in Africa.
The brilliance of “Wedged Between Man and God” comes in how self-assured the writers are as their stories show. It is instantly obvious that they did not embark on this journey to convince anyone to let them live. No. They just wrote what it is like to live. It is clear that all contributing writers understand that they are here, they have a right to be here, and they have no time to explain to anyone who has a problem with their existence why they should be here.
While each story, through context, gives nuance to each writer’s experiences and these experiences in turn mirror the experiences of some other Queer people in different parts of Africa, Eiphee Ize’s “Let’s Pray” particularly touches on the multiplicity of views and diversity in the LGBTQ community. The demographic of Queer African Women whose stories appear in this collection further deepens the reality of diversity that exists as a primary feature of the LGBTQ community about which Ize’s story left a strain of thought. In this collection, there are stories from young women, middle-aged women, women who have never married men, women who have married men, studs, transwomen, bisexual women, ciswomen and androgynous women. This intentional effort to have something for everyone marks “Wedged Between Man and God” out as a significant body of work like no other.
“Wedged Between Man and God” is the mirror to understanding what it means for an African human to be Queer. To be African or from Africa and be Queer is to be wedged between man and God. It means that more often than not, you find your reality, an evidence of God’s omniscience, redefined as unnatural and evil by humans who would go to the ends of the world to change you, to cleanse you and to turn you into what you are not just so that you can fit their own definition of what is fitting to exist in this world with men and what would be let into the world to come with God.
For so long, Africans have grown to redefine Queer identities as unnatural, un-African and unpalatable with our climes. This collection of non-fiction stories goes a long way to making a cardinal contribution to changing this narrative.
About Ernest: Ernest Nweke is an Abuja-based writer. His works, which cover culture, politics, and their intersection with minorities, are in ReckoningMag, Popula, Intomore, The Republic, Minority Africa, Diaspora Africa, BBC and elsewhere.
