NEW FROM MSU PRESS
Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature
Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature explores how normative ideas of sex and gender have shaped the development of Nigerian literature. The book traces this influence from the rise of mid-twentieth-century modernist writing to the contemporary appearance of LGBTQIA literature.
Author: Kerry Manzo, PhD
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Publication Date: April 2026
About the Book
Who gets to be part of a literary tradition — and who gets left out? Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature asks that question of one of the richest literary traditions in the world, and finds that the answer has everything to do with sex, gender, and the long shadow of colonialism.
Drawing on archives, personal letters, and small publications rarely examined by scholars, the book traces Nigerian literary history from the mid-twentieth-century Mbari Club — a landmark arts movement that brought together writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Flora Nwapa — through to the vibrant and defiant LGBTQIA fiction being written in Nigeria today. Along the way, it reveals how colonial institutions and ideas shaped not just which books got published, but which writers were taken seriously, which voices were celebrated, and which were pushed to the margins.
The concept at the heart of the book is what I call heterocolonial modernity — the way that heteronormativity and colonial power worked together to define the boundaries of Nigerian literary culture. But the book is not only a story of exclusion. It is equally a story of the writers — women, queer, and gender-nonconforming — who found ways to write, publish, and be read despite those boundaries, and whose work demands a reckoning with how we tell the story of African literature.
"This meticulously researched, theoretically astute, and methodologically innovative book offers a brilliant account of the emergence and burgeoning of queer African literature. Manzo’s book makes a singular contribution to the field and is a must-read for scholars and students in postcolonial, African, and Global South gender and sexuality studies."
—Kanika Batra, author of Worlding Postcolonial Sexualities: Publics, Counterpublics, Human Rights and coeditor Journal of African Cultural Studies
"Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature offers a fresh account of Nigerian literary modernism, disentangling the operations of heteronormativity in both the history of the movement and texts themselves, as well as demonstrating the complexity of the signifier ‘woman’ between indigenous, colonial, and postcolonial nationalist models of gender, sexuality, the self, and the body."
—Brenna M. Munro, associate professor of English at the University of Miami, and author of South Africa and the Dream of Love to Come: Queer Sexuality and the Struggle for Freedom
Advance Praise
"Manzo offers powerful new concepts—like ‘heterocolonial modernity’ and ‘contiguity’—to trace how marginalized writers have been excluded and silenced, and yet have endured. Both rigorous and lyrical, Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature is a vital intervention that challenges dominant literary genealogies and opens space for reimagining African literature through the lenses of sex, gender, and power."
—Lindsey Green-Simms, author of Queer African Cinemas
"An intellectually daring work of literary history, Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature is an exciting milestone in the field, disrupting the cloying orthodoxies of African literary history in rigorous, culturally nuanced ways, keeping us spellbound as we compulsively turn pages filled with exhilarating discoveries and fascinating re-readings."
—Terri Ochiagha, lecturer, the University of Edinburgh, McMillan-Stewart Fellow at the Hutchins Center of African & African American Research at Harvard University, and author of Achebe and Friends at Umuahia: The Making of a Literary Elite
Invite Me to Speak
I am available for talks, panels, and workshops on Queer Contiguities of Nigerian Literature and the research behind it. Topics I speak on include:
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Writing by and about women in African literary history
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Gender, sexuality, and the making of the Nigerian literary canon
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The history of Nigerian literature and the Mbari Club
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Queer and trans writing in contemporary Africa
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Heterocolonial modernity as a framework for African literary history
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Decolonizing the literary canon
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LGBTQIA rights and literature in Nigeria and the Global South
Talks are appropriate for academic departments, reading groups, literary organizations, human rights organizations, and general audiences with an interest in African literature, queer studies, or postcolonial theory.
To inquire about booking, fees, and availability, please get in touch.