Homosexual: sinner and un-African?
Tensions around male homosexuality in Amatesiro Dore’s “The day he came”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23925/2236-9937.2023v30p162-184Keywords:
The day he came, Amatesiro Dore, queer African literature, politicization of homosexuality, theologization of homophobiaAbstract
Despite the still scarce discussion in Brazil on queer issues in Africa, different literary works aim to represent queer Africans today, among which is the short story collection Queer Africa 2, where we find Amatesiro Dore’s “The day he came,” the corpus of this paper. Therefore, we intend to analyze Dore’s short story based on the interaction between the world of art and the world of life, seeking to understand the context of homosexuality in Nigeria, the fictional space chosen by Dore and the country where homosexuality is criminalized, and its relation to discourses of religion (sin), law (crime) and tradition (un-Africannes), based on the voices of mostly African intellectuals who focus on the topic. We concluded that the author, even establishing the fictional world in Nigeria, prioritizes religion discourse over legal or traditional issues as the main source of the conflicts the protagonist Peter lives.
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