Literature and violence: the representation of religious-dogmatic violence against the gay character in Speak No Evil, by Uzodinma Iweala

ABSTRACT Queer African and Afro-diasporic literature has received little attention in Brazilian academia. This text seeks to fill this gap by analyzing Uzodinma Iweala’s novel Speak No Evil, focusing on the religious-dogmatic violence suffered by the protagonist Niru. Methodologically, the literary analysis is based on the Bakhtinian assumption that content, material, and form are indivisible elements of the literary text, which leads us to discuss this type of violence (content) through the form and material used by the author to represent how the character is subjected to a rejection of his homosexuality by his parents and religious leaders, who even subject him to an exorcism session. Therefore, I conclude that the author uses a vocabulary related to the values of Pentecostal demonology to represent the perniciousness of dogmatic-religious violence, allowing us to establish a dialogue between this fictional world and the world of life, in which, despite there being laws or not for this type of “conversion therapy”, LGBT+ people are still victims of this authoritative discourse of religion and subjected to these inhumane rituals. KEYWORDS: Queer African literature; Religious-dogmatic violence; Exorcism; Speak no evil; Uzodinma Iweala