"Diasporic Trans/Forming in Diriye Osman's <i>The Butterfly Jungle</i>," by John C. Hawley
 

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1-23-2025

Publisher

Zed Books / Bloomsbury Publishing

Abstract

Queer East African writers like Diriye Osman and Afdhere Jama instantiate Christopher Ian Foster’s 2019 assertion that ‘neoliberal globalization and the management of movement— immigration—cannot be disentangled from heteronationalist discourses’. The criticism that one read years ago, and still reads, that the gay and lesbian “lifestyle” is a Western imposition on African identities, and that those Africans who espouse such identities for themselves are inherently un-African or even anti-African, is now ensconced in the laws of many African nations, making it dangerous to remain in one’s native land if one expresses—publicly—a sexuality that is non-normative or non-binary. The former is sometimes tolerated if the gender roles reinscribe the traditional roles of male and female; the latter, though, is seen (in Africa and elsewhere) as more destabilizing. Focusing on Diriye Osman in The Butterfly Jungle (2022), the essay will discuss the language used by those migrants from Eastern Islamic African countries, in particular who have gone abroad to escape procrustean categories and who understand their sexuality as one facet of their free personal expression of identity, one that is shifting and open to evolution. As Jama (2015) writes, ‘No matter where we are queer Somalis are fighting for our rights; even against western police who are not valuing our lives, or faith leaders who don’t recognize ours’.

Chapter of

Transafrica: The Languages of Postqueerness

Editor

Chantal Zabus
Chris Dunton

Available for download on Thursday, July 24, 2025

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