In a country where silence is often safer than truth, Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya stands unflinchingly at the crossroads of art and danger. As a queer Nigerian writer, his decision to write stories that humanise queer people’s experiences in a society that seeks to erase them comes with a perilous cost: his very life.
Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya is a Nigerian writer whose works have appeared in several reputable magazines, including Afrocritik, Brittle Paper, Fiction Niche, The Shallow Tales Review, Kalahari Review, One Black Boy Like That, African Writer, Eunoia Review, Bending Genres, Livina Press, Fiery Scribe Review, The Airgonaut, among others. He was shortlisted for the 2018 Dusty Manuscript GTB National Novel Prize, and for the 2023 Afritondo Short Story Prize. He won the 2022 Itanile International Short Story Prize and was also the First-Position in the 2022 Bicontinental Arts Lounge Contest for “The Green We Left Behind” Creative Nonfiction Climate-Change Print Anthology.
Akinsaya is also the author of “How to catch a story that doesn’t exist,” a short story collection that is set to be released at the end of 2024, in which he provides a raw and intimate tale of love, fear, and resistance, set against a backdrop of cultural repression. In this interview, we ask Akinsaya about what it means to be a storyteller in a country where queer existence is not just misunderstood but criminalized. He shares the emotional weight of living under constant threat and how his pen has become both a weapon and a shield.
Your short story collection, “How to catch a story that doesn’t exist,” deals with love, intimacy, and identity in a very profound manner. Why did you write on such themes in spite of Nigerian cultural expectations regarding love?
I wrote and published the collection because I needed to respond to what I had heard about love, intimacy, and identity in queer communities.
I was a teenager when I realised I wasn’t supposed to exist. If I did, I was expected to fit into the cultural norms. “Normal” meant having crushes on girls and wanting to explore puberty with them. I was obviously not normal, and this alone isolated me. It felt like I was being judged for everything I said, how I said it, how I walked, and what I was excited about. Often not in silence. So I turned to things I hoped would not judge me: books, films, silence, stillness, and Jesus.
These mechanisms did not help me feel less alone or afraid. They did, however, divert my attention away from the truth about myself. I didn’t see myself in any of the films I watched. They were only easy to turn to because they represented a world in which I could escape and fantasise about being something else. And silence served as a shield, while stillness became a fortress. If I didn’t speak or move, no one would notice me and say something that would instantly break my spirit.
Later, I would fall in love for the first time, meet people who were similar to me, and realise how many stories I had to tell about my own and others’ experiences. I also discovered that the stories in my heart would violently contradict what traditional Nigerian culture was said to demand in terms of love, identity, and association.
I wrote queer stories to correct lies: that being queer was immoral and unAfrican; that being queer was influenced by habits, abuse, and foreign cultures; and that being queer harmed posterity.
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I wrote queer stories to correct lies: that being queer was immoral and unAfrican; that being queer was influenced by habits, abuse, and foreign cultures; and that being queer harmed posterity.
– Adeniyi Ayosojumi Akinsanya
Nigeria has a complicated relationship with queerness that is often marked by hostility. How do you think fiction can play a role in shifting cultural perceptions and narratives around LGBTQ+ identities?
I believe Nigeria’s attitude towards queerness is both hostile and hypocritical. We are losing men, and it is not due to queerness. An arbitrary cult known as “Brotherhood” is sweeping through Nigeria, filled with men with unresolved traumas and puerile fantasies who have completely lost touch with their emotions—except for murderous rage to vent on feminine persons.
Deep down, these men are shaking shriveled shadows of themselves. They would rather become monsters than be vulnerable. That is how civilisation crumbles. That is how humans lose their humanity and turn into ferocious beasts. That is why wars, genocide, and violence exist in all aspects of society. That is why love as a language is disappearing.
Writing a story that rehumanises people is a labour of love and courage, and I believe I took a huge risk with my life when I wrote the book.
I could be found and lynched. I could be kicked out of the family. I know writers who spoke out against religious extremism and were attacked. I know queer people who were violently assaulted after coming out on television or through social media. I know celebrities who are afraid to speak out in support of human rights for fear of being called out and cancelled.
Still, does this imply that we should look away? I don’t believe so. I know social leaders and activists who have sung, spoken, marched, and protested for human society’s liberation. These people refused to give up until something positive happened. And, while it is easy to romanticise legacy or delude oneself into thinking that being a writer qualifies one as an activist, I believe that everything we say or publish is a statement of influence in the world.
How do you handle the potential backlash or criticism of writing queer stories in a country with anti-LGBTQ+ laws?
When I sent the manuscript of How to Catch a Story That Doesn’t Exist to my publishers around August 2021, my heart was pounding. It was like I was about to sail down a street full of booby traps. I received messages from strangers cursing me for promoting evil, for teaching young readers to be wayward and perverted. I was amused. I am still amused because the idea of queerness as evil is devoid of both logic and sociological proof. And about teaching, I wondered, and still wonder, how anyone can be taught to be what they are not capable of.
That was when I began to approach verbal attacks online over my book with, first, a simpering high-mindedness. The abusers were often ignorant or just plain vile, and so were beneath any common ground I could offer by way of back-and-forth keypad schooling. Then, later, I started leaving long posts of more education on how sexual orientation and gender identity do not come to anyone on the wings of peer pressure. I have also talked about how I did not write those stories to “initiate” anyone—because there is no cult in the first place—but to tell someone out there that they are not alone in their fears and feelings and failings and anything else I portrayed through my characters in the book.
I suffered a number of professional restrictions (I mean, I’m quite out and loud on social media and HR companies are not too excited about that). What will shock you is that a few of those restrictions came from LGBTQ non-governmental agencies. Apparently, I was too “loud”, to work in their organizations. I must add, however, that this does not mean I didn’t get any underground support from them when the book came out. Some queer Nigerian heavyweights in the activist diaspora and even foreign queer people bought many copies of the book on Amazon.
Do you ever struggle with self-censorship due to the cultural and legal environment in Nigeria?
Social media is the largest compound these days in which we see cultural and legal spaces come alive. If someone goes against what is deemed the only culture of a people and you want them punished for it, just tag them to a call-out post or enlist faceless gossip blogs to spread the fire.
So, yes, I learned to live in sketches and avoid what I wanted to say, even what I wanted to hear. I used to talk about sex in frozen whispers, and my love interests in opposite pronouns. I used to hide behind flat innuendos and hasty likes on comments that resonated with my mind rather than speak my own my mind.
I was scared of someone catching me online and reporting me to someone that mattered. Sometimes, a friend or follow request/notification would come from someone, and, because I felt like they would catch me naked, I would block them instantly.
Soon, I accepted that my fears were there because I fed them. And that they were stopping me from breathing, like a hand choking my throat. Then a new fear was born: what if I died before I found the courage to live—no matter how short?
That was the very moment I chose to stop using unreal pronouns for my objects of attraction.
I told myself, “You have not done anything wrong. You are simply breathing.”
If you are not inherently ashamed and guilty of something, no one can use shame and guilt to imprison you for it.
Nine years ago, I confessed to myself what my internalised queerphobia was doing to me. Today, the story has changed. I now talk about sex without feeling guilty. I now talk about whom I am attracted to without feeling a need to wrap them in shallow falsehoods.
How do you think queer Nigerian writers, artists, and activists can support one another in creating safer spaces for self-expression and storytelling?
This question makes me laugh from my belly. I have my own question. My question is whether queer Nigerian writers, artists, and activists identify as queer. If they do, maybe they already have a safe circle where they can admit it. If they don’t, they will tell you that they do not need to identify with the label of queer before writing about it.
But, as much as that sounds perfectly valid, it’s just a Straw-Man fallacy. If a queer writer doesn’t want to be labelled queer, it’s fine and within their rights. But they cannot be seen as a safe space by other grounded queer writers who are labelled and, therefore, more exposed to identification and, by extension, a sense of danger.
Safe spaces are safe spaces not because they are classy cliques, but because people in there can connect identities and relate to one another’s struggles.
Not too long ago, a poet that writes queer poetry was dragged on social media for impersonating a transgender writer so he could win a heavy prize money meant for poets in the transgender category. I know this poet. He has never claimed to be queer, let alone transgender—in fact, he is decidedly silent during queer discourses and roots himself firmly in cis-heterosexual circles where homophobia thrives.
How can he be a safe space for the bright-eyed up-and-coming queer writer who writes about their own identity and would like to own it as a persona?
Aside from How to Catch a Story That Doesn’t Exist, I’ve had several LGBT stories published in reputable magazines and journals, including hard copies. I earned very few awards, and none of them were from LGBT organisations. I’ve attended bootcamps and writing seminars where the air became tense the moment I addressed my LGBT identity and how it affects my stories. Someone—a well-known writer who I know is still in the closet—once approached me and said, “You write so brilliantly. So, so good. Why don’t you write some non-queer stories for a change?”
I wanted to tell him that I had written non-queer stories and gotten international honours for them as well, but something about the way he spoke and the half-jeering smile on his face convinced me not to.
Are you curious about the LGBT literary reviewers and editors that avoid public association with me and my stories? Do you want to read about queer writers that criticise the work of other queer writers as being overly attention-seeking and agenda-driven? If I begin, you will believe it is about me, rather than a far more serious malaise that is larger than me.
Perhaps I do not have a direct response to your query. Perhaps by restating my views on safe spaces in literary queer groups, one might begin to address these issues.
How do you approach the creative process when beginning a new story? Do you start with characters, themes, or a particular scene?
I normally get my titles first. It feels strange, like if someone is saying, “This is what I want you to write about now.” As a writer, my ear picks up words at a higher frequency than others’. Also, I am a natural eavesdropper, so it is simple for me to draw inspiration from people’s conversations around me and utilise it to create dialogues (and possibly scenarios) in my head that I am barely able to recreate on paper.
On rare occasions, I meet or see someone on the street, and something about them inspires me to build complex characters. When this happens, my story becomes character-driven.
Overall, I don’t actively consider storyline or themes (unless I’m writing an outline for a contest story and must adhere to specific standards). They become incorporated into the tale as the writing continues.
Is there a particular character or story in your collection that was especially challenging for you to write? What made it difficult, and how did you overcome it?
“Akakaeno” from Half of a Yellow Akamu was the most difficult character to write in the collection. He is a young lad with an excessively early sexual awakening. I was frightened that others would meet his character and call me horrible names for creating it.
In fact, only days before submitting the manuscript to my publishers, I considered eliminating the story entirely. But when I remembered why I had written it in the first place, I found the courage to go on with it. There are many Akakaenos out there, and their experiences, no matter how horrible, ought to be heard.
WhatsApp Voicenotes was the toughest piece in the book for me. It seemed like a complicated piece to me, and I needed to follow it on paper. So much so that I purposefully complicated my own mental processes, physically “scattered my own head” while composing it. Now that I think about it, my use of unapologetic native adverbs in the syntax must have been a reflection of how chaotic my mind had been.
But I needed to write it. I needed to show someone out there that the reasons for our acts, our motivations, are not necessarily reasonable. That it is very feasible to create a horrible scenario in your imagination and then go with it because you are too lonely to locate someone to talk to.
After I finished the story, I spent hours napping to regain my sanity.
What’s the most meaningful piece of feedback or reaction you’ve received from a reader about your collection?
Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans, South Africans, Americans, and Europeans all gave me glowing feedback on the book. Each of them made me hold my breath and my eyes water.
But when I read the remark of a specific heterosexual man I used to go to school with, I started crying. He wrote to me in an email:
“This is my first book with such content. “I hope it’s not the last.”
I think you understand why that made me cry.
Your work often incorporates Nigerian vernacular and local expressions. How do you balance the use of Nigerianisms with ensuring your work remains accessible to a global audience?
How did I read and understand Shakespeare’s works at university? How did Things Fall Apart capture the world’s attention? I believe that the heart of a story will find its reader and speak to them. It makes no difference how much code-mixing or code-switching you do; what matters is how your story makes the reader feel.
Language is what binds us together across tribes, races, classes, genders (or lack thereof), sexual identities, and philosophical perspectives.
I make an effort to incorporate any non-English aspects of storytelling into my characters and storylines.
As a child, after reading my mother’s school novels, I would turn to the Yorùbá novels that my father had bought me, so I grew up with a dual focus on language. This, I believe, is what keeps me interested and intentional in diluting my diction with my mother tongue and other forms of Nigerian colloquialism. And because that is the moment when my spirit becomes most authentic, it automatically opens up a portal for me to write in the way I have learnt since childhood, in the way I speak, in my truest form, as I am: mixed, assorted, and rich.
I don’t think any serious global audience can turn down a bowl of steaming-hot relatabilities.
Do you find that Nigerianisms add layers of meaning or cultural nuance that can’t be conveyed through standard English? Can you share an example from your work where a Nigerianism deepened the story?
Yes, I agree that Nigerian expressions have a way of thickening simple words until people that wouldn’t understand such expressions suddenly understand them—even beyond what English would have done.
You know how someone would write, “Your head is not correct,” and even though a white reader does not find the expression familiar, they can still make sense of it. They can even go on to attribute their loose sense of the expression to something more profound, like how correct ideas cannot come from minds (read as “heads”) that are incorrect (read as “loony”).
In my book, in the story “When the Children Come Home,” a white man hears the word “yansh” for the first time in his life, and, albeit he gets tacitly corrected that it is supposed to be “nyash”, he keeps on calling it “yansh” and becomes so curious about the word that he asks aloud, “What in God’s name is ‘yansh’ ?”
I think it’s sublime.
I used that section of the story to highlight the concept of tribal/cultural differences both within Nigeria and between Nigeria and other countries. The Nigerian character who first uses the word in the story believes she has correctly pronounced it. The second Nigerian who uses it pronounces the word differently than the first. And the foreigner among them is stuck on the first pronunciation he heard, despite the fact that it has been “corrected.”
I believe it is reminiscent of how colonialism occurred, how colonial masters’ perceptions of Africa were based on what African leaders initially described Africa to be, and how these colonialists continued to ignore the many other stories about Africa because they could not or would not unlearn what they thought they knew about Africa.
The queer writing landscape in Nigeria is still fraught with tension, fear, and resistance. Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya’s work actively challenges cultural and legal norms by humanising queer identities and experiences through fiction. The societal hostility towards LGBTQ+ people, exacerbated by oppressive laws, makes storytelling a powerful act of defiance as well as a tool for cultural transformation. However, as Akinsanya’s experiences demonstrate, queer Nigerian writers face both external threats and internal challenges within their communities. Despite these challenges, the bravery of these writers continues to test the limits of what is acceptable in Nigerian literature. By telling their stories, they are fighting not only for recognition, but also for the right to exist—on the page and in society.
