This stirring and intimate collection brings together 25 unique narratives to paint a vivid portrait of what it means to be a queer Nigerian woman. Covering an array of experiences - the joy and excitement of first love, the agony of lost love and betrayal, the sometimes-fraught relationship between sexuality and spirituality, addiction and suicide, childhood games and laughter - She Called Me Woman sheds light on how Nigerian queer women, despite their differences, attempt to build a life together in a climate of fear.
Through first-hand accounts, She Called Me Woman challenges us to rethink what it means to be a Nigerian ‘woman’, negotiating relationships, money, sexuality and freedom, identifying outside the gender binary, and the difficulties of achieving hopes and dreams under the constraints of societal expectations and legal terrorism.
She Called Me Woman is full of beautifully told stories of resistance and resilience, joy and laughter, heartbreaks and victories, collecting the realities of a community that will no longer be invisible.
Praise for She Called Me Woman
"I celebrate this anthology as an African feminist. I celebrate this anthology as a woman determined to trouble all that silences the "deviant and beyond the norm." Mona Eltahawy, - author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution
"These true stories, these women speaking in their own words, of their own lives, are radical, vital, and timely [...] they are beautifully told, the pain and honesty and hope and joy in these accounts is strong like a song." - Stella Duffy, author of The Hidden Room
"[...] this book will change lives by giving voice to experiences that are too often forgotten or erased. This is a vital and vibrant collection." – Sara Ahmed, author of Living a Feminist Life and Queer Phenomenology.
"I cried and laughed. I was always fascinated." Linda Grant, author of The Dark Circle
"Here are stories we've been waiting for – some harrowing, others funny, still others uplifting. The fact that these stories are now being told is nothing short of miraculous. These narratives mark the dawning of a new era – they are game changers.' Jackie Kay (MBE), Scottish Poet Laureate, author of Trumpet and The Adoption Papers.
"[...] this book is an ode to the rich tapestry of queer life in all its brilliant, struggling, layered and triumphant complexity." - Sisonke Msimang, author of Always Another Country