‘Queer people were living, loving, suffering, surviving – but invisible': west Africa's groundbreaking gay novel 20 years on

The Guardian

7 days ago

When Jude Dibia first tried to sell the manuscript of his groundbreaking novel Walking With Shadows 20 years ago, he was aware of the silence around queerness in West African literature. While there had been books with gay themes, his is widely recognised as the first novel in the region to put a gay character at the heart of the story.
'The absence wasn't just literary; it was societal,' Dibia says. 'Queer people were living, loving, suffering, surviving – but largely rendered invisible or spoken of in hushed tones, if at all. That silence felt violent. It felt like erasure.
'Literature has the power to name what society refuses to see. Walking With Shadows was my small attempt to do that,' he adds.
Initially, some publishers refused to touch the novel, considering it too controversial. Others suggested he rewrite the ending, either making the character renounce his homosexuality or killing him. When the book was finally published, Dibia was called names. He lost friends and was blacklisted from certain literary spaces. He was invited to events, only to later be uninvited once the organisers realised who he was and what he had written.
Dibia's novel is widely recognised as the first Nigerian book to depict queerness with depth and empathy. It tells the story of Ebele 'Adrian' Njoku who has buried his sexuality in the past, become a husband and a father, but who has to confront who he really is when a co-worker informs his wife that he is gay.
Ainehi Edoro, associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the literary blog Brittle Paper, says the novel marked a turning point. 'For a long time, queer characters in African literature were either invisible or treated as symbols of crisis, like their presence was a sign that something had gone wrong,' she says. 'So when Dibia wrote a novel that centred a gay Nigerian man as a full human being, that mattered. He pushed back against an entire archive of erasure.'
The book, which turned 20 this year, was published by Blacksands in 2005 and republished in 2011 by Jalaa Writers' Collective. In 2019, it was adapted for the screen by Oya Media and a special film edition was released.
But the initial backlash Walking with Shadows faced has not entirely disappeared, says Dibia. 'Some still view the book as too controversial, too political, too queer. But I've made peace with that. If a story makes people uncomfortable because it tells the truth, then perhaps discomfort is the first step toward awareness.'
Dibia was forced to leave Nigeria and now lives in Sweden after the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, a law that criminalises homosexuality, was passed in January 2014, fearing he might become a target for his writing.
Since the publication of Walking With Shadows, an increasing number of books with queer characters at the heart of them have been published in West Africa and, specifically, Nigeria. There have been a slew of firsts: Chinelo Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees (2015) was the first novel to focus on lesbianism; Romeo Oriogun's Burnt Men (2016) was the first queer poetry book; Chike Frankie Edozien's Lives of Great Men: Living and Loving as an African Gay Man (2017), the first gay memoir; Unoma Azuah's Embracing My Shadows: Growing Up Lesbian in Nigeria (2020), the first lesbian memoir.
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Dibia, who has published two more novels – Unbridled in 2007 and Blackbird in 2011 – considers the fact that his debut gave visibility to lives that had been systematically ignored as the book's most meaningful contribution.
'That's the legacy I'm proudest of: not the controversy, but the quiet courage it gave others to tell their own stories, in their own ways,' he says.
Chike Frankie Edozien, author of Lives of Great Men, agrees. 'Each time I do something that examines the fullness and varying natures of our lives, I know that I'm continuing the work Jude began by adding to a canon that boldly debunks the prevailing narrative that queerness in West Africa is foreign or imported,' he says.
'We've been diverse as long as we've existed and I'm thankful for Jude's brave work that cracked open the door for the rest of us to kick down. All these years later, it [Walking with Shadows] still is for me a guiding light.'
For the British-Nigerian gay rights activist Bisi Alimi, the book was liberating the moment he laid hands on it. 'Prior to that day, I had never really read any book as personal and relatable as that. Jude and the book did something to me,' he says.
The writer and researcher Ayodele Olofintuade had a similar experience. 'The book came as it is, creating a new genre, queer literature,' she says. 'Encountering the novel about two years post-publication was a shift in reality for me. Walking with Shadows is a roadmap of what is possible.'
Dibia's deepest satisfaction comes from readers all over the world who say that Adrian's story helps them feel seen. He sometimes wishes, however, that he had been better prepared for, and protected against, the fallout. 'But then again, maybe part of the novel's power comes from the fact that it was written without armour,' he says. 'I don't regret writing it. I only regret the climate that made it feel dangerous to tell the truth.'
Today, Dibia still hopes people see the book as an act of courage and, more importantly, an act of care. Likewise, 20 years from now, he hopes the novel will still feel relevant yet like a historical document of a time outgrown.
'[I hope it] becomes a reminder of what silence cost us, and how far we've come,' he says.