Transgressive and Nonnormative Sexualities in Emerging Nigerian Fictional Narratives as a Revisioning of African Womanhood

Abstract: This essay examines Nigerian women's transgressive sexualities as a redefinition of African womanhood. It identifies emerging transgressive sexualities in third-generation Nigerian literature, such as lesbianism and Nigerian Muslim women's sexual nonconformity, as compelling counternarratives against dominant masculinist discourses of heterosexism and religious orthodoxy. Referring to Chinelo Okparanta's Under the Udala Trees (2015) and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim's Season of Crimson Blossoms (2015), this essay shows how patriarchy, backed by religious dogma, constructs the female body and sexuality. By demonstrating Nigerian women's act of decolonizing their gendered bodies from masculinist and religious discourses of oppression, it identifies women's quest for sexual freedom as an epistemic revisioning of African womanhood.