A Queer Coming-of-Age Tale, Set in a Brutal Anti-Gay World

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.