As a queer teenager growing up in northern Nigeria, Arinze Ifeakandu often searched for books that reflected his feelings.

He scoured the books at home and imagined closer bonds between the same-sex characters. He searched the book stalls in Kano, the city where he lived, hoping to find stories that focused on LGBTQ lives. Later, during secret visits to Internet cafes, he came across gay love stories, but they often involved lives far removed from his own and closeted white athletes living in snowy cities.

Ifeakandu wanted more. He began writing short stories in which gay men struggled against loneliness but also found lust and love in conservative, modern Nigeria.

“I’ve always taken my own desires, my own fears, my own joys seriously,” said Ifeakandu, 29. “I knew I wanted to write characters who were queer. This is the only way I can appear on the site.”

Be stories won favor with readers and critics. In 2017 he became a Finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writingand last year his debut collection, “God’s Children Are Little Broken Things.” won the Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers.

Ifeakandu’s work is part of a boom in books by LGBTQ authors across Africa. Their stories, long hidden in literature and public life, are at the center of works that are breaking boundaries across the continent – and winning rave reviews.

Major publishers in Europe and the United States are getting involved, but new publishers are also popping up across the continent with the aim of publishing African writers for a primarily African audience.

Thabiso Mahlape, who founded Blackbird Books in South Africa, has published NahanA queer author and artistAnd “Exhale“, a queer anthology. “Much more can be done,” she said.

The increasing momentum coincides with a broader cultural moment. More and more Africans are discussing sex openly and expression of their sexual and gender identity. Small Pride marches And Film festivals celebrate queer experiences, and some African religious leaders are speaking out Supporting LGBTQ people.

Young people, which make up the majority of the continent’s populationuse social media to discuss these books, and the big screen brings some of them to a wider audience: “Jambula tree”, a short story by Monica Arac de Nyeko from Uganda about the romance between two girls, inspired by “A friend“, a film that was presented in Cannes.

The books – fiction, non-fiction and graphic novels – are also being published to combat this virulent homophobia And Anti-gay legislation throughout Africa.

By writing them, the authors hope to captivate readers and challenge the popular notion that homosexuality is a Western import.

“These books are an invitation to change mindsets and start a dialogue,” said Kevin Mwachiro, co-editor of “We’ve Been Here,” a nonfiction anthology about queer Kenyans 50 and older.

“These books say, ‘I’m no longer a victim,'” he said. “It’s gays who say, ‘We don’t want to be tolerated.’ We want respect.’”

The dynamic is new, but books that center queer stories are not unprecedented in Africa.

Mohamed Choukri’s 1972 novel “For the bread alone” The depiction of same-sex intimacy and drug use caused a stir in Morocco. The fascinating novel from 2010 “In a strange room” by South African Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut followed an itinerant gay protagonist. And the Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina made headlines around the world in 2014 when he published a “lost chapter” of his memoirs titled “I’m Gay, Mom.”

But the books being published now expand Africa’s literary canon, according to literary experts and publishers. These stories – family saga, thriller, science fiction and more – delve into the complexities of being queer in Africa and the diaspora.

Its authors challenge the silence surrounding queer culture in their own communities (“Love offers no security” edited by Jude Dibia and Olumide F Makanjuola) and the hope and sorrow of being trans or gender fluid (Akwaeke Emezis “The Death of Vivek Oji”), intersexual (Buki Papillons “An Ordinary Miracle”) or lesbian (Trifonia Melibea Obono’s “The bastard.”)

They examine the intersection of politics, religion and sex (“You Have to Be Gay to Know God” by Siya Khumalo) and the vicissitudes of the secretive gay scene in a bustling metropolis (“No One Dies Yet” by Kobby Ben Ben). )

The books also explore the uncomfortable and difficult process of coming out to conservative parents (“Speak No Evil” by Uzodinma Iweala) and imagine entire families whose members are on the LGBTQ continuum (“The Butterfly Jungle” by Sender Osman). “More than words”, a 2023 illustrated book by Kenyan creative collective The Nest examines the everyday lives of gay Africans through science fiction and fan fiction.

Authors often use works of fiction to imagine bold new worlds.

Nigerian-American writer Chinelo Okparanta focuses on a young woman’s coming-of-age story during Nigeria’s Biafra Civil War in her 2015 novel “Under the Udala trees.” The book’s protagonist, Ijeoma, meets Ndidi after finishing school. Together they attend secret lesbian parties at a church, explore sexual pleasure and even talk about marriage.

Growing up, Okparanta said she read “So Long a Letter,” a 1979 epistolary novel by Senegalese writer Mariama Bâ in which a widow writes to her longtime friend, and imagined “a world in which There could perhaps be more in women’s relationships.” ,” she said. “I must have been hungry for an African novel with a story like that.”

“Under the Udala Trees” ends on a hopeful note: Ijeoma’s mother accepts her, and she and Ndidi end up together after her marriage to a man fails. Ndidi even imagines a Nigeria that is safe for gays – a powerful statement considering the book was published a year after Nigeria’s former head of state signed a criminal law against homosexuals.

“There has to be space for people’s hope,” Okparanta said.

Nonfiction authors also share their experiences with love and dating, navigating hostile workplaces, facing rejection from their own relatives, and finding their “chosen” families. While they emphasize confession and catharsis, some of the books also aim to provide insight into the lives of gay people on the continent.

“Sometimes people think we are just freaks having sex with each other and that there is no love, no desire, no sensuality,” said Chiké Frankie Edozien, whose memoir “Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man” won a Lambda Award.

“I wanted truth, honesty and vulnerability,” he said.

Like Edozien, who lives in the Ghanaian capital Accra and is a frequent visitor to New York, some queer African writers have relocated or begun their careers in the West and use their work to explore not only the communities they left behind, but even those who have left them live in.

This includes and is often seen as Abdellah Taïa, the Paris-based writer originally from Morocco first openly gay Arab writer and filmmaker. Taïa has written nine novels that explore what it means to be Muslim, queer, Arab and African. He has also directed two films: “Salvation Army,” which is adapted from his novel of the same name, and “Never Stop Shouting,” which speaks to his gay nephew.

But so did Taïa’s work The focus is on France and Europe and that Anti-migrant and anti-Muslim sentiments that were created there.

“If you’re gay and only think about gay liberation, that means you don’t understand how the world works,” Taïa said. “I am not completely free because other people are not free.”

For many of these authors, publication brought public recognition and even appreciation. But some were harassed or even molested Death threats.

Edozien hopes the books will inspire younger generations to read a “dignified and balanced” representation of gay Africans.

“Books are really powerful, books are really intimate,” Edozien said. And having these queer-centered stories “in libraries for decades is great because the needle has been moved, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

Ifeakandu dreams of a future where queer-centered African stories are no longer the exception to the rule.

“I didn’t choose the country I was born in, just like I didn’t choose my sexuality,” Ifeakandu said. “Reluctantly and hopefully we will get up.”