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WORK TITLE: Blessings
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PERSONAL
Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
EDUCATION:Washington University, St. Louis, MO, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer; Washington University, St. Louis, MO, Post-Degree Teaching Fellow.
AWARDS:BBC Best Book of 2024, for Blessings; Electric Literature’s one of the “Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction.”
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including McSweeneys Quarterly Review, The New England Review of Books, Dappled Things, and Lolwe.
SIDELIGHTS
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Chukwuebuka Ibeh, the son of a book seller, is a Nigerian writer who grew up reading religious texts, literary African fiction, and authors in the African Writers Series. Ibeh’s debut coming-of-age novel, Blessings, follows the struggles of a gay teenager on the cusp of Nigeria passing its Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. In 2006 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Obiefuna’s rigid and hyper masculine shopkeeper father, Anozie, has his suspicions of his teenage son, who is emotionally sensitive, academic, and likes to dance. When Anozie catches Obiefuna and his male store clerk in an embrace, Anozie immediately banishes his son to a Christian all-boys boarding school to straighten him out. As the school uses violence and strict hierarchy to instill fear and compliance, Obiefuna survives with passivity and conformity. Although he learns about the pleasures of sex, he is so determined to become invisible that he betrays the other queer boys in a desperate attempt to deflect suspicion from him.
Commenting on the reception Blessings received, Ibeh told Uche Okonkwo in The Republic: “I was prepared for much more vitriol, but that hasn’t been the case. I’ve also been amused by the split responses to events in the book, with some people wanting much less of the same thing that others seem to want much more of.” Ibeh explained the inspiration for writing Blessings to Zulaikhah Agoro in AFREADA: “I’ve always wanted to write a story about boarding school in Nigeria. It is such a fascinating place with so many stories,” also “The book is really interrogating what it means to grow up queer in Nigeria, and how that experience affects not just the main character but his family too.”
The book also shows Obiefuna’s loving relationship with his victimized mother. “Ibeh’s extraordinarily composed and deeply felt debut ultimately asks a different question. Its protagonist faces a difficult and universal challenge: how do we rise from broken beginnings and find better ways of nurturing ourselves?” declared Michael Donkor in Guardian. Estelle Shirbon reported in TLS. Times Literary Supplement: “At a time when even harsher anti-gay legislation has been adopted in Uganda and is now being considered in other African countries, this powerful story is sadly all too relevant. Chukwuebuka Ibeh deserves immense credit for his courage in writing so explicitly about the difficulties of growing up gay in such an oppressive environment.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Guardian, February 17, 2024, Michael Donkor, “Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh review—sublime coming-of-age tale.”
TLS. Times Literary Supplement, March 1, 2024, Estelle Shirbon, “Magic and Terror: Same-sex Love in a Hostile Nigeria,” review of Blessings.
ONLINE
AFREADA, https://www.afreada.com/ (December 2024), Zulaikhah Agoro, “Chukwuebuka Ibeh: In Conversation.”
The Republic, https://republic.com.ng/ (August 23, 2024), Uche Okonkwo, “My Early Reading Featured a Lot of Religious Texts.”
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Post-Degree Teaching Fellow
Chukwuebuka Ibeh was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His writing has appeared in McSweeneys Quarterly Review, The New England Review of Books, Dappled Things, and Lolwe. He was Runner-up for the 2021 J.F Powers Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the 2019 Gerald Kraak Award and 2020 Morland Foundation Scholarship and was profiled as one of the "Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction" in Electric Literature.
‘My Early Reading Featured a Lot of Religious Texts’
Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s First Draft
Chukwuebuka IbehAugust 23, 2024August/September 2024First DraftInterviewsNigeria
Nigerian writer, Chukwuebuka Ibeh, says the reception in Nigeria for his debut novel, Blessings, has been delightfully surprising: ‘I was prepared for much more vitriol, but that hasn’t been the case. I’ve also been amused by the split responses to events in the book, with some people wanting much less of the same thing that others seem to want much more of.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
My early reading featured a lot of religious texts—the Bible taking centre stage. That progressed to cheap, quick-reads I got from second-hand booksellers with titles like The Snake Girl and My Father’s Last Wife. My father sold books, and through him, I discovered the African Writers Series, where I came to find and love literary African fiction, the likes of Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emecheta and Cyprian Ekwensi.
If your life at this moment was the chapter of a book, which book (fiction or non-fiction) would that be?
Maybe Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I haven’t lived in the United States of America for very long, but I, like Ifemelu, find myself asking so many questions about race and racism in America.
What’s the last thing you read and disagreed with?
I’ve been disagreeing with a lot of things on X (formerly known as Twitter) lately, if that counts.
My father sold books, and through him, I discovered the African Writers Series, where I came to find and love literary African fiction, the likes of Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emecheta and Cyprian Ekwensi.
What’s the last thing you read that changed your mind about something?
A recent article about a famous Nigerian journalist/activist. I find myself leaning towards scepticism now, replacing my earlier admiration.
What is your writing process: edit as you write or draft first, then edit?
A bit of both, depending on the piece of writing being worked on, and my mood at the time.
What was your process for writing your debut novel, Blessings?
I was in a sort of isolation for months on end. I drafted the first scenes by hand and wrote in a notebook, before transferring to a computer. I practically wrote every day.
Blessings follow Obiefuna’s journey of self-discovery. It is also a coming-of-age story that also explores love and loss. What inspired this story?
Like everything else I write, life.
And what’s one thing about the reactions to the novel that surprised you?
The reception in Nigeria has been delightfully surprising. I was prepared for much more vitriol, but that hasn’t been the case. I’ve also been amused by the split responses to events in the book, with some people wanting much less of the same thing that others seem to want much more of.
I was prepared for much more vitriol, but that hasn’t been the case. I’ve also been amused by the split responses to events in the book…
And which book/author had the most influence on your approach to writing it?
Every author or book that I have read and loved had an influence in writing this book. I can’t think of one with much more influence than another.
What’s something simple but surprising about writing and publishing a book?
How much of the work is never really done. You are always working on the book in some way—even after it’s published. Some might say that is where the real work begins, particularly for a debut author.
What is the most meaningful piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
‘Just write’—says every reasonable writer ever.
‘Begin each revision on a clean slate’—from Kathryn Davis, my wonderful writing professor.
Who is the most compelling character you’ve ever encountered in a coming-of-age novel?
I loved the character Benjamin from The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma. And I was fascinated by Jaja in Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
What’s the last great book someone recommended to you?
I am currently reading The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, on a friend’s recommendation, and it’s ‘great’ by all accounts.
And what’s the best book (by an African author) you’ve read so far this year (and why)?
It hasn’t been the best reading year for me, but I loved Uche Okonkwo’s A Kind of Madness, just on account of its chaotic plotlines.
Which contemporary books do you think will become classics in the future?
Definitely ‘Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots and Arinze Ifeakandu’s God’s Children Are Little Broken Things. Ifeakandu’s book is a sublime, pioneering masterpiece.
What book(s) have you always wanted to read but haven’t gotten around yet?
I started reading Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, but got distracted a few pages in and haven’t quite gotten around to finishing. I should re-start it soon and finish. Everyone seems to love it.
What’s your literary pet peeve?
Too much use of semi-colons tends to get on my nerves. Also, the word ‘cried’ when not used literally.
Which three books from/about Nigeria should be on everyone’s bookshelf at this moment?
Chinua Achebe’s The Trouble with Nigeria, Buchi Emecheta’s The Joys of Motherhood, and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.
And what book (from Africa) do you feel has not yet received the attention it deserves?
No acclaim would ever be enough for Arinze Ifeakandu’s God’s Children Are Little Broken Things.
What is your favourite topic to write or read about these days?
The politics of race and desire/attraction in America.
What topic do you wish more authors were writing about these days?
I also wish more authors were writing about the politics of racial desire in America.
You are always working on the book in some way—even after it’s published. Some might say that is where the real work begins, particularly for a debut author.
What are you currently working on?
A novel about the life of a Nigerian activist/martyr.
Question from Candice Iloh: What is your family’s relationship to your work?
Pretty normal.
Who should we interview next?
Uche Okonkwo⎈
Nigerian Author Chukwuebuka Ibeh on Finding ‘Blessings’ in a Country Where Same-Sex Marriage (and Homosexuality) Is Outlawed
Banished to boarding school after getting caught by his father, a teenager forges his own path to self-acceptance
Chukwuebuka Ibeh. Photo: Erin Lewis, Washington University, St. Louis
Chukwuebuka Ibeh. Photo: Erin Lewis, Washington University, St. Louis
Sarah Bricker Hunt
Sarah Bricker Hunt
Published: May 9, 2024 | Last Updated: May 9, 2024
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African novelist Chukwuebuka Ibeh tells the story of a queer boy struggling to define himself while seeking out affirmations in post-military Nigeria in his debut novel, “Blessings.” The book is set to publish June 4 via Doubleday, a Penguin Random House imprint. Already, USA Today has included it in their list of the Best Books by Black Authors to Read in 2024.
In the book, the powerful bildungsroman weaves in elements pulled from the real-life Nigerian political battle over marriage equality in that country, which enacted the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act in 2014. The law further restricted the rights of LGBTQ+ people in a place where homosexual sex and same-sex organizations and businesses have been illegal for decades and where, as late as 2013, according to U.S. Pew Research Center, 98% of residents feel society should not accept homosexuality. Ibeh draws parallels between this legal context and the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage in the U.S. In some ways, he says, Nigeria’s same-sex marriage ban was a reaction to Obergefell.
“Blessings” is based partly on Ibeh’s experiences in a Christian boarding school in Nigeria, where he felt safer remaining mostly closeted. The book focuses on Obiefuna, a teen boy sent away to live in such a school after his father catches him being intimate with another boy. The school is strict and overwhelmingly conservative, but queerness is still a fact of life among the students, and there are blessings to be found along the long road toward self-acceptance.
Pride Source recently connected with Ibeh, named one of the “Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction” by Electric Lit, to learn more about how he explores the devastating impact of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act against the backdrop of his coming-of-age novel and how he feels about the global state of LGBTQ+ culture and acceptance.
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What can you tell readers about how the U.S. Supreme Court decision Obergefell vs. Hodges influenced the Nigerian government on the marriage equality front and how these legal moves influenced your book?
That’s a good question. I like to be clear that homophobia has never really been foreign to Nigerians — and it’s true that our earlier anti-gay laws were British colonial laws, but there’s a whole other context to that. I think, though, that part of the “effect,” so to speak, of the Supreme Court decision was an indication of too much liberal progress worldwide, which contrasted and alarmed a very religious, very conservative Nigeria. My guess is that Nigeria needed to send a message to the liberal West that it would not “allow its values to be corrupted.” It’s a stance I would otherwise find amusing for the irony, if it didn’t have actual victims.
The law, I think, was also part of a cynical political tactic by an increasingly unpopular government looking to score points with a conservative populace. These were among the things I wanted to explore in the novel, so I suppose “influence” is apt.
Your book focuses on Nigeria, but the story feels very universal — one that LGBTQ+ people anywhere can relate to on many levels. Would you agree with that assessment?
Yes, and thank you. I think all over the world, the liberal West included, queer people still don’t have full rights, still struggle with identity, acceptance — both self and external — and belonging. [They] are still more likely to be victims of targeted violence and hate crimes. It’s always curious for me to hear Nigerians say things like “go to America if you’re gay” as if America is an absolute paradise for gay people. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
On the other hand, readers outside Nigeria and Africa stand to learn so much about a culture that is quite unique in and of itself, as well. What are a few things about Nigerian culture you hope readers will take away?
I realize now that all boarding schools probably have similar structures and hierarchies, but I hoped to showcase the uniqueness of Nigerian religious boarding schools. And then there are other things that I think a lot of Nigerian Igbo families [a deeply rooted southeast Nigerian ethnicity and culture that emphasizes traditional family structures and conservative values] are obsessed about — the impact of naming, for instance.
Do you think things are getting better for LGBTQ+ people in 2024 in Nigeria? What about the U.S.?
Against my writerly instinct, my general outlook on life is one of an eternal optimist. So, regardless of the fact that the anti-gay laws are still in place and there have been no plans to reverse it, I still believe things are getting better. If only that Nigerians seem to be having open conversations about it — problematic sometimes, granted, but we’re talking, at the very least. It’s my hope that this novel drives even more conversations, and sparks more debates.
It also seems to me that there is an increase in queer visibility and open existence in Nigeria. It can’t be easy, obviously, especially for Nigerians based in Nigeria, but it’s admirable to see. In the U.S., however, I sometimes worry about a possible retrogression and that people are getting a bit too comfortable with bigotry in the guise of free speech. It’s particularly jarring in the U.S. because you’ve been made to believe it’s different here. In Nigeria, at least, you know early enough what to expect, and brace yourself ahead of time for the blow.
“The Blessings of Queer Lives”: In Conversation with Chukwuebuka Ibeh | Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
by Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
March 18, 2024
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Chukwuebuka Ibeh, whose debut novel Blessings, was recently published by Vikings, was barely 14 when the antigay law was enacted in Nigeria in 2014. That Act is cruel justification of the dehumanizing condition the Nigerian state has kept its queer citizens, a daily reminder that the country and its leaders have no space, no regard, no love for queer lives. But queer people have always existed and still exist in Nigeria—this is the message of Chukwuebuka’s novel.
Blessings is a memorable, even if tragic, account of a gay Nigerian’s life of oppression within and outside his home as he navigates his sexuality in a homophobic society. Chukwuebuka’s preparation for the vocation of the novelist is impressive, given his rich publications in McSweeneys, The New England Review of Books and Lolwe, and the recognitions his writing has received. He was a runner-up for the 2021 J.F Powers Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and Morland Foundation Scholarship, and was profiled as one of the “Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction” in Electric Literature. Chukwuebuka’s experience of studying creative writing under Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers, and Tash Aw prepared him for the demands of literary activism.
The first time Chukwuebuka and I talked about Blessings was in 2020. It was a brief chat in which he described the then novel-in-progress as “hard” to write. We did not have enough time to follow through the conversation because we were busy researching an aspect of precolonial Igbo culture. That was before the pandemic came and disrupted the world. It took another year to receive an update on the novel, this time from my friend Franklin Okoro, who is also Chukwuebuka’s close friend. Chukwuebuka thanked Franklin in his acknowledgements as one the people “who quietly rooted for [him] from the sides,” but Franklin was nothing less than loud in his faith in Chukwuebuka and his support for Blessings. So, on a Sunday night in 2021, at a bar close to Imo State University Junction, Franklin told me that Chukwuebuka spent the entire months of the COVID-induced lockdown at his hostel in Bayelsa writing the novel. His voice was warm and his manner proud when he described the miracles he hoped the novel would bring to the world. I am not sure Franklin knew the title of the book then, or if Chukwuebuka had even settled for a title at the time, but what emerged from those many months of silent labour is a book that weaves the vulnerability and the daring of the human spirit into an equal, unmeasured, luminance. Franklin was right in thinking of the novel as a bringer of miracles, only that Blessings brings a miracle Nigeria does not yet want to accept, the miracle of the existence of queer lives. It is too late for Nigeria to resist this miracle because Blessings is already out in the world, naming the previously unnamable violence, sorrow, sadness, and shame that characterize queer intimacies in the country. But much more enduring is the novel’s triumph in capturing queer lives as they are, human, utterly human.
Blessings is a liturgy of bodies: the queer body, the maternal body, the diseased body. I am fascinated by Blessings’ display of queer and maternal bodies and broken by the diseased body in the novel. Obiefuna’s imagination of his mother’s cancer is disenabling: “He imagined the cancer eating her from the inside out, he imagined her body failing her. It was the worst form of betrayal.” This reminds me of my attempt to describe my mother’s fight with diabetics, in a personal essay:
“Diabetics ate my mother’s body till it could not find any flesh to feed on.” And my grief, on her passing, was like Obiefuna’s: infinite, inconsolable, closed. The gift of health is so ordinary that we often forget the tragedy of sickness, but the trauma of loss is ever present to remind us of that lost health. But in Blessings, and which is that miracle we speak of, disease binds mother and son in ways that even health did not, could not, aspire to. When I had the chance to ask Chukwuebuka how he created Uzoamaka, his response moved me, and has stayed with me since then:
I dedicated the novel to my dear Aunt Uloma whom I lost to cancer. It’s been so many years, but the ache is still as fresh as ever. I remember looking at her while she suffered, aware of her decline but powerless to stop it. People tell you the peace comes after the loss but that has not been my own experience at all.
Me too. And I do not know if peace ever comes after such a violent loss.
Violence touches everyone and everything it sees. Sometimes it blurs the distinction between the innocent and the guilty, the ugly and the beautiful, the victim and the oppressor. We sometimes find that we are on both sides of the experience, that we are the dilemma we struggle to resolve. Chukwuebuka’s attention to the complicated truth of human nature shows in the variety and unpredictability of his characters, who are as obviously imperfect as they are desirous of perfection. There’s Senior Papilo, who on punishing Obiefuna for something trivial, “studied his face in the light, running his finger gently over the welt on one side of his face” and screamed “Jesus, I can be a beast sometimes.” And there’s Obiefuna who, on hearing the news of Tunde’s abduction, remembered his role, his silence, when his friends beat Festus, their effeminate classmate, for being loudly and proudly queer. It can be shocking, the moment we come to a revelation of our own inner beast. The reach of homophobia is staggering. It targets everything and everyone. That Obiefuna can be found in the camp of the oppressor, the homophobe, says something about the necessity of queer healing and the urgency of queer survival. Chukwuebuka is committed to ensuring that queer narratives, if not queer lives, are heard. We should listen to him.
***
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
Chukwuebuka, thank you for gifting me a copy of Blessings.
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
You’re welcome, Darlington.
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
The first time we talked about the novel was in 2020 when I accompanied you to the Imo State Arts and Culture. Do you remember?
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
How could I possibly forget? Good memories, aren’t they?
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
Of course, they are. And, on our way out of the facility, you said, “I am writing something that might be a novel, and this one is hard.” Reading Blessings four years later, the same day the Ghanian parliament passed the “Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Act” that targets and criminalizes same sex relationships in Ghana made me realize the weight of what you hinted that day. Times have changed since we made that research trip, but everything remains the same. I am concerned about how Obiefuna would respond to the news from Ghana.
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
You could say, in that sense, that the novel’s themes are timeless, which is usually a good thing about any work of art but particularly sad in this regard. One of the novel’s assertions is the predictable callous mis-priority of Nigerian – and by extension, many African – politicians. You hope to be proven wrong when you make these assertions, and then Ghana goes right ahead to pass these obnoxious laws and it feels like a gross vindication. I know Obiefuna is somewhere shaking his head. It sometimes feels very much like all there is to do.
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
It’s perhaps more heartbreaking that Ekene, Obiefuna’s brother, now lives in Ghana. I don’t know if Ekene knew about Obiefuna’s sexuality, or if he cared. And, if he did know and care, would he ever raise the subject of Ghana? I may never know. But what I know, for sure, and remember fondly, is that experience in which the brothers came close to manifesting love. It’s a quintessential moment of absolute brotherhood, an enduring testament to the inebriated, unshrinkable joy of being seen and appreciated. I am talking about the scene in which Ekene begs Obiefuna to dance for him. He makes this request ignorant of the fact that Obiefuna had been harassed and beaten in the past by their father Anozie, for dancing, as he puts it, like a girl. How gracefully, how tenderly, how clearly liberating and yet irrevocably melancholic you describe this moment:
Obiefuna grabbed Ekene’s hands and set his feet down to halt Ekene’s swaying movement. He shook himself free. He felt woozy, light-headed. His eyes had begun to spin. “We’re too old for this foolishness, Ekene,” he said. He could not help smiling. “There’s no one watching,” Ekene promised.
Here’s Obiefuna at the downhill of suffering and shame, with an eternal dread of being watched, so conscious of the heterosexual gaze that he now self-polices himself. The impact of homophobia on the queer psyche is damaging. But isn’t it more frightening that family and friends can be and indeed are complicit in this ungovernable, sometimes invisible, act of homophobic violence?
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Darlington, your reading of this novel is so spectacular you make me almost impressed by my own work, and curious to reread. The scene you just referenced was one of my favorites in the novel and I can picture, even now, exactly where I was when I wrote the very first draft of it. To your question, “frightening” is indeed the word. But also mixed with a sense of helplessness on both ends. One of the things I hoped to address in this novel, I think, is just what you said – the tacit complicity of loved ones in the struggle of queer coming-of-age. I think there’s a very vulnerable spot in the middle – a cross between otherwise unconditional familial affection and devotion, and resistance to what feels immoral to them, and the approach to that can sometimes be malicious. And both, I would say, are equally damaging to varying degrees. To the question of Ekene’s complicity, I like to think that Ekene might not have known initially, being very young and all, but he certainly figured everything out at some point, and what follows is that very human trait of silently sidestepping uncomfortable discourse, hoping it’ll somehow go away if it’s not addressed. It’s also homophobic, if you ask me, but perhaps not necessarily violent, like Anozie’s.
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
It’s hard to forget the moment Obiefuna and Anozie finally had a conversation about Obiefuna’s sexuality and Anozie’s brutal response to it, from physical banishment to a boarding seminary school to emotional estrangement. When Obiefuna responds to his father’s admonishment that Nigeria’s antigay law might ruin him, with the following words, “I’ve been imprisoned all my life, Daddy,” I felt obligated to reach out and hug him. I suppose this is why Obiefuna felt alone in the world when his mother Uzoamaka—the only person who truly saw him and accepted him along before he could see and accept himself—died. It is astonishing, even miraculous, the maternal sensitivity that holds mother and child in Blessings. Are they not the blessings the novel proclaims?
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
I couldn’t agree more! That was also another favorite scene, but also one of the most depressing to write. And “imprisoned” felt very fitting a description for growing up queer in Nigeria, I think. It’s sometimes amusing, in a crude way, to think of the government patting itself on the back for doing something damaging, when the real damage, I think, really begins far earlier. In this novel, from when Obiefuna is beaten at eight just for being a good dancer, so much that he quits doing that. When he is bullied in school and abused by seniors, forced to be everything and anything but himself. Can you think of a tougher prison? I have had a couple of readers struggle to reconcile the narrative with the title, which is fair, considering the multitude of sadness within the novel. But you seem to have gotten the idea. Well done!
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
I was sad for Uzoamaka, just as much as I cared about Obiefuna. It is cruel, even dehumanizing, that Anozie did not tell her his reason for sending Obiefuna away to boarding school. The silence around his decision stems from his perception of Obiefuna’s sexuality as an unspeakable evil, something that can and should be erased by silence. And that silence travels. It follows and shrouds queer intimacies. Imagine the finality of Aboy’s tone when he thought about Anozie’s reaction to his sexual connection with Obiefuna. Aboy told Uzoamaka: “He would never forgive me.” In that instant, there seems to be a heartbreaking hesitation to the narrative and the lives that it captures. Silence is a manipulating, disempowering tool. For, in refusing to speak about Obiefuna and Aboy, Anozie denied Uzoamaka the right to know about and participate in the decision regarding her son’s education. Also, he denies Obiefuna the right to autonomous selfhood. Does it bother you, this heteronormative and patriarchal investment in silence as a tool of discipline and punishment?
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Certainly does. And I like to be clear by the way that I don’t regard Uzoamaka as a perfect blameless victim in this. For as much as she cares for her son, there’s still the part of her who’s resistant to what he is – or, at the very least, taking her time to process and come to terms with it. It’s non-malicious, we can see, so it’s easy to cut her some slack, especially when her behavior is contrasted with the brasher, meaner Anozie. I think too, in addition to all that you say about the use of silence in this novel and in this society, silence is used in this novel as a tool of self-denial. I don’t think Anozie necessarily intended to hurt Uzoamaka by not telling her. It was a way of not being able to admit it to himself. There’s a sense, I think, that something becomes real when it’s named, and addressed and discussed, and most of the novel has involved the parents skirting around the issue without naming it. If anything, I think Anozie was hoping to spare her the heartache of finding out, which maybe goes back to that idea very much in line with patriarchy, of women being emotionally weaker and less capable of handling hard truths.
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
Beyond the silence in Obiefuna’s house, there are elaborate moments of silence in the novel, especially in the boarding school, where boys who love boys are shamed and beaten into eternal fear and muteness. There are moments, too, when Obiefuna dreams of and wishes for silence. The consequence of Obiefuna’s intimate night with Sparrow remains intrusively, obstinately indelible in my mind:
Sparrow had become a poster boy for all that was immoral and outlawed. He was stalwart in the face of his humiliation, readily admitting to the crime, accepting the revelation that his case was spiritual, that he was possessed by a thousand demons and would need deliverance.
But he did not out Obiefuna, and Obiefuna was grateful for and ashamed of his protection. That school is a space where teenagers are psychologically damaged. It is fearful how institutions of learning that should advance human civilization willing and brazenly commit themselves to the service of homophobia. What do you feel for the boys of Rehoboth Seminary School?
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
It’s interesting you bring that up because that was a classic example of using silence in a different context in this novel. I think the idea in this case really is an ode to the principle of “snitches get stitches” which is very much a boarding school code. It’s also why junior students never report their assaults and every form of abuse in this school flies under the radar. It’s expected, as a young man in this environment, that you were supposed to offer yourself as a scapegoat in any situation you found yourself, as some sort of honorable act of service. It’s not always a good thing, obviously, but wouldn’t you say it was a relief to see Sparrow stick to this code in this instance? And yes, of course, the irony is that homophobia – and other forms of bigotry – often begin from social circles where technically a child should feel most protected. And what better place to experience it in its purest form than a school owned by a religious body?
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
I am turning to Aboy now because he is the beginning of Obiefuna’s love life, and I like how you capture the centrality of that beginning: “It was difficult for Obiefuna to imagine what his life, what their lives, had been prior to Aboy’s arrival.” But Aboy left and chose a woman. Miebi came later, with all the charm and loveliness and warmth that Obiefuna had only associated with his mother. But he left, too, for a woman. Pressured by his family. How do you mend a heart that has been broken twice? Patricia offers an honest, even if somber and disempowering, response to the queer condition in a heteronormative world: “None of us are the same any more.” How do you heal after a fall with the knowledge that you will fall again and again?
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Let me know when you find the answer, Darlington. It’s the greatest tragedy of life, isn’t it? I didn’t exactly think, however, that Aboy was necessarily queer. The goal was more like a homoerotic attraction rather than an actual queer relationship, at least on Aboy’s part. In that sense, I wouldn’t say he “left Obiefuna for a woman,” although, of course, what’s important is not what we know to be true but how Obiefuna perceives it, and at this point he’s maybe too young and too close to the situation to get an objective overview – and can you even ever be objective when it concerns your heart? Miebi, however, was the real devastation for me as the writer, and for Obiefuna, obviously. It’s even sadder that it’s not a classic falling-out-of-love breakup, rather a survival tactic. Knowing this, of course, makes it no easier for Obiefuna – or for anyone, really.
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
I like the name Obiefuna. I had a distant relative who answered to it. An only child, his parents named him as a prayer and a hope for their lineage not to disappear, because of the many years they lived without a child. That is similar to Uzoamaka’s reason for naming her first child Obiefuna. Even the name of Obiefuna’s dormitory “Ogbunike House” connotes the death of childhood innocence that happens there. A name can say so much, can carry deep history, can’t it?
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Absolutely. I also really like the name. I had a friend who went by it and while everyone shortened it to Obi, I would hail him with the full syllable just for the fun of it. But this novel is also very much about the concept of naming, and the work they do, and I happen to come from a family that is obsessed with names and their implications. I wanted very much to engage with that.
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
Let me end on a light note. Much of my childhood was spent quarreling with my eldest sister who disapproved of my habit of “rub and shine” bath during cold days. Imagine my delight when I realized that Obiefuna and his schoolmates also do rub and shine. Thank you for capturing it so well:
The thought of ‘rub and shine’ – in which hand-and- leg washing, with cream and cologne application, was substituted for a proper bath – had always disgusted Obiefuna. But standing there at the tap with the cold snaking itself around his shoulders, Obiefuna seriously considered the prospect, if only for this one time.
This consoles me. It feels good to know that I was not alone then. Now, Chukwuebuka, tell me, do you, like me, like Obiefuna, have a history of rub and shine?
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Oh God, no. That was also very much a boarding school thing for some people, but I never did that! And I’m judging you, Darlington!
Darlington Chibueze Anuonye
Thou shall not judge, Chukwuebuka. Isn’t that what we’ve been saying all day?
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Not today, Darlington.
Chukwuebuka Ibeh
In Conversation
This week we spoke to Chukwuebuka Ibeh about his creative journey and the story behind his debut novel, Blessings.
Interviewed by Zulaikhah Agoro.
ZA: Could you share the origins of your interest in writing? When did the initial spark ignite, and what was it about writing that captivated you during that time?
CI: I’m tempted to come up with an interesting story, but the truth, alas, is that I’m really like many writers I know who just can’t recall the ‘origins’ because, as far back as I can recall, I have been telling stories in some form. I think the magic for me back then was the response of the audience - either my siblings when I told stories in verbal form, or my classmates, when I wrote and distributed stories by hand. And, at the risk of sounding obnoxious, I was also occasionally surprised by the things I could come up with creatively in very little time, on the spot.
ZA: You seem to have experienced a simply inexplicable pull to the art of storytelling and we are very glad you followed the call. Still on the subject of origins, there is usually a transition that occurs between “I just want to write” to “I want to be an author”. How did that transpire for you? What was the hardest part of your publishing journey?
CI: That’s such a brilliant question, because it’s true indeed that I always thought of writing as some fun thing to do on the side while I actually made a living with something else. I think the earliest I recall of wanting to be an author was getting my first paycheck from writing (in a foreign currency, I might add), and also after being selected and attending Adichie’s workshop. It suddenly seemed possible - that I could, in fact, make a living from this and didn’t have to approach it as a side hobby. The hardest part of the publishing journey would always be the rejections. Those consistent early nos that make you doubt yourself and question your right to do what you’re doing. It gets better, thankfully.
ZA: Thankfully, it indeed gets better because today you are officially publishing your debut novel! I’d like to talk about your book, Blessings. Why did you want to write this story, and what is it really about?
CI: I’ve always wanted to write a story about boarding school in Nigeria. It is such a fascinating place with so many stories, and yet doesn’t get half the attention it deserves, in my opinion. I also have always wanted to understand the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which I think is one of the strangest legislations to have been passed by the Nigerian parliament, especially around the time it was passed. The book is really interrogating what it means to grow up queer in Nigeria, and how that experience affects not just the main character but his family too.
ZA: That is a very engaging premise, especially for a debut and it seems to have paid off since Blessings is being simultaneously released in six different territories and three languages; English, German and Spanish. How does this make you feel, considering this is your debut work?
CI: It’s such a dream. It’s one of those things you quietly hope for because saying it out loud feels silly. I have the best agent in the world, who’s such an advocate for this novel and will pitch it to the ends of the earth if need be. It’s just heartwarming to know that an ordinary story of an ordinary boy in Port Harcourt can be received as relatable to readers around the world.
ZA: You also recently secured a film agent for Blessings, congratulations on that also by the way. What are you most excited about in the screen adaptation process? How do you think a film or tv adaptation will impact the story and the characters?
CI: Thank you so much. I’m just as curious as you are to see! It was a delightful surprise, to tell you the truth, because I wasn’t thinking at all about the cinematic potential of the book from the onset. I’m excited to know how different the plot might be (for convenience of a screenplay) and what the casting would be. I already have crazy ideas on who I would like to portray each character, and really just curious to see what that would look like.
ZA: Hopefully we will start to see some spoilers on that through your social media very soon (wink wink). Now, I want to touch on the technical side of matters. You are currently studying for an MFA at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. MFA programs are notoriously rigorous so I would like to know, how do you balance writing with school and other life commitments? What was your routine like while writing Blessings?
CI: I was lucky, I think, to have written most of Blessings before enrolling in my MFA program. Still, I did a lot of edits on the novel around the time I moved to the US and it was pretty tasking. I pulled a lot of late nights trying to meet deadlines. It was a kind of labor of love though, so I didn’t mind it very much. Plus, I was very fortunate to have a very kind and accommodating community - both my editors and my writing professors were patient and understanding when I needed extensions.
ZA: I believe that’s one of the biggest perks of doing an MFA- the inbuilt community and support. That brings me to my next question. For a writer, the work never stops so what are you working on at the moment, if you can talk about it? When can we expect another book from you?
CI: I am putting together a short story collection for my MFA thesis, but that’s really just about it, and it’s still too early for me to know or talk about it.
ZA: Right let’s not jinx it just yet. Last question, what would you say to a young writer who wants to tell a story that hasn’t been told before?
CI: Tell it. You are all the permission you need to do whatever you want, however you want.
Chukwuebuka Ibeh is is a writer from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, born in 2000. His writing has appeared in McSweeneys, The New England Review of Books and Lolwe, amongst others. He was the Runner-up for the 2021 J.F Powers Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and Morland Foundation Scholarship and was profiled as one of the "Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction" in Electric Literature.
Chukwuebuka Ibeh's debut novel opens in 2006, when Anozie, a shopkeeper in Port Harcourt, southern Nigeria, brings an adolescent boy in to help. Something about the new assistant catches the attention of Anozie's teenage son, Obiefuna; soon after, Anozie sees the two boys exchange a simmering glance. He immediately grasps its significance. After beating Obiefuna, Anozie sends him away to boarding school.
Yet the punishment proves counterproductive. Uprooting Obiefuna from his family, particularly his beloved mother, allows novel kinds of relationship to blossom. At his new school, Obiefuna attracts the favour of a succession of senior boys who induct him, gently and brusquely, into the pleasures of sex, and lead him, sometimes unwittingly, towards understanding his own sexuality.
Obiefuna soon learns that, when love is forbidden, the line between lover and persecutor is thin. Amid the school's squalor and vicious hierarchy, he becomes adept at hiding his own hand and bullying other boys to avoid becoming a victim himself. By the time he graduates, he has pacified his self-hatred, yet he remains unable to come out.
Blessings sets Obiefuna's coming-of-age against the deep social fractures and impatient modernity of near-contemporary Nigeria. The normality it describes is complex and generationally riven: memories of the Biafran War give way to homegrown pop groups and dating platforms, traditional spiritual beliefs rub shoulders with Christianity, gay rights are used as a pawn in populist politics, schoolgirls are kidnapped by Islamists en masse.
The wider world, then, is hardly more hospitable than Obiefuna's alma mater. Returning to his family home for the first time since his banishment, he's reunited with his mother, Uzoamaka. Having long known of her son's sexuality, she has concealed her acceptance of it from him just as she has hidden her cancer diagnosis -- both forms of maternal protection. Now, living together again under the same roof, her tongue freed by her illness, he finally understands her love has always been unconditional. He hardly has time to digest it before he loses her to the disease.
Ibeh's choice of subject is bold, and flies in the face both of Nigeria's colonial-era legal codes and of recent legislation, which together criminalise any non-heterosexual identity. He has publicly disputed claims that homosexuality is somehow anti-Nigerian, and pointed to the role of gender fluidity in different Nigerian traditions. In Blessings, Uzoamaka's liberal attitudes are informed by her affection towards a favoured entertainer from her village, whose name and character lightly resemble the real-life transgender performer from the '70s and '80s, Area Scatter.
Yet Ibeh has the ability to ensure his political positions inform, rather than overwhelm, the intimate dramas at the heart of his fiction. He's vocal about the writers he admires -- among them, Buchi Emecheta, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -- and clearly ambitious. With writing this good, it's to be hoped he'll soon find his name among their ranks.
Blessings is published by Viking at £14.99. To order your copy, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books
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Chukwuebuka Ibeh's debut is set in Nigeria
Credit: Erin Lewis/Viking
Chukwuebuka Ibeh was born in Port Harcourt, where his novel is set
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Telegraph Group Ltd.
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"A smart literary attack on Nigeria's anti-gay laws; Blessings, the magnificent debut novel from Chukwuebuka Ibeh, follows a young man's coming-of-age in a febrile nation." Telegraph Online, 7 Feb. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A781753519/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=34ad472e. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
Nigeria's literary canon in English is a rich and ever-evolving archive, ranging from Chinua Achebe 's cornerstone Things Fall Apart to Buchi Emecheta 's moving lamentations on immigrant life in 1960s London; from Ben Okri 's dreamscapes to the colourful comedy of Lola Shoneyin's 2010 novel The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives. This treasure trove is often a point of departure for the nation's younger writers, with intertextual hat tipping -- covert or otherwise -- widespread. In the opening of Chukwuebuka Ibeh's Blessings, which begins in 2006 in Port Harcourt, the influence of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 's own coming-of-age debut, Purple Hibiscus, is potent.
Like Adichie's first novel, Blessings is initially located in a rigidly patriarchal, fiercely normative Nigerian household. There's a victimised, wearied mother, Uzoamaka, and an intractable, violent father, Anozie, who is hellbent on rooting out supposed deviance and disobedience within his family. A "nebulous sense of doom" is pervasive.
One seeming challenge to Anozie's masculinist regime is the "soft-voiced innocence" of his eldest son, Obiefuna. Obiefuna is a shy and academic teenager with an unlikely talent for dancing: an astonishing "ability to manipulate his limbs into impossible angles". Obiefuna's dreamy sensibility is perceived by his mother as a source of "elation ... despite the irritated snorts of other parents". Anozie, however, is threatened and disgusted by the idea that his delightfully light-footed son is perhaps a "woman in a man's skin".
Early in the novel, Anozie stumbles upon Obiefuna and Aboy, the apprentice at the family's business, in a clinch. Anozie's response is to pack his son off to a ferociously Christian all-boys boarding school miles away in Owerri. It's a bleak place. The physical abuse that Obiefuna encountered at home takes on new psychological and sexual forms. Interactions with older students -- the brooding and sadistic Senior Papilo, and the exploitative and seductively unpredictable Senior Kachi -- complicate Obiefuna's tenderly emerging sense of his own sexuality.
In a novel of secrecy, silences and silencing, Ibeh's sentences throughout are fastidiously pruned
Obiefuna's strategies for survival largely consist of passivity, compliance, patience and conformity. The Bildungsroman may seem an inherently mobile form, charting the path towards maturation, and indeed Obiefuna's life expands as he finds an alternative "chosen family" and is forced to engage with the Nigerian political class's weaponisation of queerness. But so much of this story is actually about Obiefuna's attempts at stillness and invisibility, as he does the expedient thing -- betraying other queer friends, keeping the secrets of dubious authority figures -- to ensure that people do not "figure out" who he is. It will be painfully recognisable to many marginalised people that Obiefuna's arc is dominated by his continuation of the campaign of erasure his father initiated against him. As such, in a novel of secrecy, silences and silencing, Ibeh's sentences throughout are fastidiously pruned.
There are several striking occasions on which this aesthetic makes way for a little more transcendence, and we're given a hint of something higher and more hopeful, as implied by Ibeh's title. These instances often come about when Obiefuna is swept up by music, letting his meticulously patrolled and controlled body move freely, and connecting with an inner and untarnished joy. Much of this sublime feeling is also generated when Obiefuna thinks of his mother: "Sometimes she manifests in his dreams as a small dot in the sky, the lone light that stays on even as others fade away. She doesn't speak ... but [he hears] the sound of her voice ... singing ... something about comforting a child who was robbed of his belongings by a greedy world."
While this beautiful image is one of a mother's enduringly nurturing force, Ibeh's extraordinarily composed and deeply felt debut ultimately asks a different question. Its protagonist faces a difficult and universal challenge: how do we rise from broken beginnings and find better ways of nurturing ourselves?
* Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh is published by Viking (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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Credit: Photograph: Erin Lewis
'A story about stillness and invisibility' ... Chukwuebuka Ibeh.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Guardian Newspapers Limited
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"Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh review -- sublime coming-of-age tale; A young man learns how to love in a hostile world in this debut from Nigeria." Guardian [London, England], 17 Feb. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A782856842/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=93530f4f. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
In the novel “Blessings,” by Chukwuebuka Ibeh, a gay Nigerian boy works to understand himself in a country that’s increasingly hostile to people like him.
BLESSINGS, by Chukwuebuka Ibeh
A decade ago, Nigeria freshly criminalized homosexuality. In the mostly Muslim north, the maximum penalty for even a suspected gathering of queer people became death by stoning; in the Christian south, over a dozen years in prison. The country has a deep-rooted culture of persecuting its gay citizens, but recent years have been something like a reign of terror against Nigeria’s L.G.B.T.Q. community.
Queer people, though, tend to be the resisting type. One of the most effective forms of resistance is visibility, and not for nothing has there been a new wave of defiant literature about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender life in Africa. Joining this literary scene are the young Nigerian author Chukwuebuka Ibeh and his debut novel, “Blessings.”
“Blessings” is a plain-spoken queer coming-of-age story. It follows Obiefuna, a young gay Nigerian boy who, in the novel’s opening pages, is caught by his father in an intimate position with another boy. He is sent away to a boarding school, a brutal and confusing place where older students beat younger students for fun and where being gay is taboo, but also where homoerotic relationships are common. Life after school, in a society that is hostile to people like him, is not much easier.
To American readers, “Blessings,” while often lovely, may feel like stepping into the past. It showcases a world that people in the United States like to think they’ve moved beyond, where being gay dooms one to unhappiness and adversity, where the sexuality of a boy is assumed based on stereotypes like whether he is a dancer or an athlete, where a classroom mention of Sodom and Gomorrah is enough to make a closeted teen twitch nervously.
What makes these tropes newly urgent, though, is their context in Nigeria. Ibeh sets his story in the years leading up to the country’s 2014 anti-gay law, and, intriguingly, connects the dots of queer persecution and the everyday tragedies that are woven into the fabric of Nigerian life. The same structures that encourage homophobia, in Ibeh’s view, make for harshly patriarchal households, abusive school environments, corrupt opportunism, torment and repression.
“Blessings” is a novel of juxtapositions. In addition to Obiefuna’s story, we also get the perspective of his mother, Uzoamaka. She suspects that her son is queer and loves him nevertheless. She had no say in Obiefuna’s banishment and desperately wants him back home. As the novel jumps between their points of view, we see love and cruelty set close together; acts of compassion are quickly followed by violence, and vice versa. Ibeh, though, is less confident writing about Uzoamaka. She exists less as a character and more as a force, which is to say her chapters are less of a plot than a device.
Along the way, there are glimpses of transcendence. Obiefuna is hit with a feeling of “how brilliant and bright and beautiful everything was”; he is “filled with a sense of wonder at the world’s perfection” as he hears “the sonorous singing of birds.” These lines are moving, proof that Obiefuna’s life isn’t all suffering, but bluntly trite, they also betray a writer with room to grow.
More successful is Ibeh’s language of perception, the specificity with which he observes characters deny themselves a bit of happiness. When Obiefuna is alone with a mercurial upperclassman who is ultimately, and mysteriously, caring, for example, Ibeh writes: “Senior Papilo traced his eyes for a long moment. For once, for a split second, Obiefuna thought he could interpret what that dewy-eyed glassiness in Senior Papilo’s eyes meant. And then Senior Papilo looked away and looked at him again, and, just like that, it was gone.”
The best of “Blessings” is made of sentences like these: revelatory yet unresolved, simple yet polyphonic, hopeful yet full of heartbreak.
BLESSINGS | By Chukwuebuka Ibeh | Doubleday | 280 pp. | $28
PHOTO: (PHOTOGRAPH BY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/
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Barone, Joshua. "A Queer Coming-of-Age Tale, Set in a Brutal Anti-Gay World." New York Times [Digital Edition], 4 June 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A797600946/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e23e9650. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
BLESSINGS
CHUKWUEBUKA IBEH
256pp. Viking. 14.99 [pounds sterling].
Obiefuna is fifteen when his father, Anozie, brings home a village boy of roughly the same age to work for the family in Port Harcourt, southern Nigeria. Obiefuna feels attracted to the youth, Aboy, and senses over time that his feelings may be reciprocated. The teenagers come close to a mutual confession and a kiss, but Anozie walks in on them. Horrified, he banishes Obiefuna to a Christian boarding school for boys in Owerri, a long drive away, giving no explanation to Obiefuna's heartbroken mother, Uzoamaka.
In this taut opening section to his debut novel, Blessings, the young Nigerian writer Chukwuebuka Ibeh deftly introduces the central theme: a sensitive gay boy's struggle to fit into a society in which homophobia is the unquestioned norm, masculinity is narrowly defined and signs of non-conformism are often met with brutality. "Are you a woman in a man's skin?", Anozie asks after seeing his son dance with abandon at a party, before belting him.
The rest of the novel alternates between chapters chronicling Obiefuna's school and university years, and rather more meandering ones that follow Uzoamaka as she grapples with her son's absence, reminisces about his childhood, and her own, and battles a serious illness. Ibeh expresses emotion with satisfying simplicity: a fleeting mention of Aboy during a phone call home leaves Obiefuna "filled with a bubbly warmth in his chest that stayed with him for days". The author occasionally uses puzzling turns of phrase: we find a face "serenaded" by heat from a bucket of water, a group of friends with "their demeanour cornered". Strong on psychological insight and group dynamics, Ibeh seems less interested in conveying a sense of place, and readers might have expected a more compelling portrayal of the city and people of Port Harcourt.
At school Obiefuna experiences bullying and friendship, the thrill of sexual awakening and the terror of exposure. His perilous interactions with fellow pupils and his resulting inner tumult are vividly narrated. Other passages do not quite hit the mark, such as when he performs oral sex on a boy who then avoids him, bringing the painful realization that what had been "magical" for Obiefuna was just a "minor, necessary release" for the other boy. This section might have worked better had the description of the night-time assignation conjured up Obiefuna's sense of magic.
The chapters devoted to Uzoamaka contain some remarkably well-executed scenes and some that feel tangential. The best are those that concern her growing understanding of her son. Initially baffled by Anozie's decision to send Obiefuna away, she divines the truth when he later dismisses Aboy on a false pretext. In a wrenching moment later in the book she gently signals to Obiefuna that she knows and accepts that he is gay, only for him to recoil from her.
The character of Anozie is less well developed. It is unclear why, if he means to suppress his son's homosexuality, he thinks it sensible to send him to a school full of boys, under no parental supervision. Softened by time and his wife's illness, he gradually displays more tolerance towards his son, but his voice in the novel's latter stages sometimes lacks authenticity. When he asks the grown-up Obiefuna to open up about "the boy who broke your heart", these do not feel like words that he would use.
In the final section, concerning Obiefuna's university years, the wider social and political context of his struggles becomes apparent when Nigeria adopts a law criminalizing same-sex "amorous relationships", with lengthy jail sentences for offenders. This law, enacted in 2014 to wide domestic acclaim, led to a well-documented increase in the abuse and harassment of gay people in Nigeria, not just by the police, but also by mobs and vigilantes. At this point in Obiefuna's story he has fallen in love with an older man and got to know his friends, many of whom are gay or lesbian. The impact of the new law is immediate and cruel.
At a time when even harsher anti-gay legislation has been adopted in Uganda and is now being considered in other African countries, this powerful story is sadly all too relevant. Chukwuebuka Ibeh deserves immense credit for his courage in writing so explicitly about the difficulties of growing up gay in such an oppressive environment. In so doing he joins a growing list of young African writers including Arinze Ifeakandu (Nigeria), Monica Arac de Nyeko (Uganda) and Kevin Mwachiro (Kenya) prepared to use their writing to speak up.
Estelle Shirbon is a Reuters journalist who worked in Nigeria from 2005 to 2008 and is now based in London
Caption: Young men prosecuted for homosexuality at the Federal High Court in Lagos, 2020
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 NI Syndication Limited
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/
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Shirbon, Estelle. "Magic and terror: Same-sex love in a hostile Nigeria." TLS. Times Literary Supplement, no. 6309, 1 Mar. 2024, p. 16. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A784195513/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=79137408. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.
BLESSINGS
by Chukwuebuka Ibeh
Doubleday. 288 pages, $28.
BOOKSTORES AND LIBRARIES are full of coming of-age books by gay men, but Blessings isn't your usual novel in that genre--an aspect that's both appealing and aggravating. Initially set in Nigeria--a country that's notoriously anti-gay--in a relatively well-off household, the story opens with the arrival of a new member of the family, a young man whom the patriarch, a reticent, almost bullying adult named Anozie, brings home at the behest of an acquaintance who wanted the boy to learn a trade--or possibly, to just go away, as the story lightly hints.
Almost immediately, the fifteen-year-old Obiefuna (sometimes called "Obi") becomes obsessed with this newcomer, Aboy, who sleeps on a mattress in a room shared with Obiefuna and his younger brother, who is Anozie's favorite--a fact that Obiefuna grudgingly accepts. When Aboy squeezes into bed with Obiefuna and his brother one night, Obiefuna kisses the slumbering Aboy; later, the two share an intimate moment in the kitchen. Anozie observes the lingering act, grows angry, banishes Aboy, and sends Obiefuna to a "seminary," which is best described as a secondary school.
At this point, the story subtly shifts from a feeling of warm but shaky safety to one of discovery and danger. Adrift and missing his mother, Obiefuna understands that he is at the school for the duration and is denied a chance to explain things to her. His father even disallows Obi a chance to go home for the holidays, instead sending him to stay with an aunt. Grieving the loss of watching her son mature, Obiefuna's mother, Uzoamaka, knows that her son has always been gentle and creative, but she doesn't seem to have the words to describe his sexuality. For his part, Obi never dared to tell her his truth. Instead, as his mother knows and to his father's everlasting dismay, Obiefuna is constantly, quietly compliant and obedient. Only Anozie knew his son's truth for sure, and Uzoamaka is powerless to confront or question her husband for most of the story.
These things happen in the first few chapters of Blessings. The rest is about Obiefuna's quest to understand himself and his gayness: learning how to get along with the all-powerful Seniors at the seminary, and discovering that he doesn't want to be with women at all but that he'll do almost anything for another boy. The story picks up briefly when he's befriended by the cruelest boy, Senior Papilo, who manipulates Obiefuna psychologically, getting Obi to do his chores in exchange for protection and food and an awkward sexual encounter with a girl off school grounds. And then Senior Papilo, in a passage that feels so very abrupt, passes his final exams and moves on, leaving Obiefuna to continue exploring his sexuality on his own and to finally understand that he is still in love with Aboy, whom he hasn't seen in a few years and whom Obi longingly wonders what if, as he moves on with his life.
It's here, toward the end of the book that the plot deals with Obi as a wiser, seasoned young man, but the story is told breathlessly, as if our reading time is running out. And that's too bad: author Chukwuebuka Ibeh, who was born and raised in Nigeria but now resides in the U.S., offers readers a truly great character in Obiefuna, who floats through a life that happens to him, mostly letting others call the shots. This aspect of Obiefuna, the main subject of this tale, seems to ask readers to be sympathetic to the character, which seems highly appropriate because Obiefuna is someone you'll want to protect. Still, while the tale is interesting and the characters stellar, the plot development is alternately quite fast and snail's-pace slow, like a driver with a learner's permit on an open road. A little more fuel to this story would have helped.
Terri Schlichenmeyer is a freelance writer based in Wisconsin.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
http://glreview.org
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Schlichenmeyer, Terri. "Nigerian Love Affair." The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, vol. 31, no. 5, Sept.-Oct. 2024, pp. 39+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A811078548/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=32320ead. Accessed 3 Dec. 2024.