Remaking the Right to Mourn: Homosexuality, Disenfranchised Grief and a Critique of African Humanism in Arinze Ifeakandu’s “Where the Heart Sleeps”

In Africa, mourning is both a personal and communal expression of grief. Among the rationales for commiseration or shared mourning is a recognition of the bereaved person's loss and pain. This recognition of grief is culturally believed to help the bereaved walk through grief. However, the right to mourn and be recognized as an ideal mourner is contingent on some ideals of being and relations that invalidate the grief of any mourner outside this framing. Specifically, in postcolonial African cultural framing of marriage as the union of a biological man and a biological woman, the grief of the gay widower (or lover) is barely acknowledged publicly. Arinze Ifeakandu's short story, "Where the Heart Sleeps," constructs and contests this disenfranchised grief of a homosexual partner. The story, by narrating the condition of mourning vis-à-vis discrimination based on sexuality, interrogates the extent to which African humanism or <i>ubuntu</i> is realized in homophobic cultures. It imagines a world in which the resources of <i>ubuntu</i> resolves the contradiction in the African cultural imaginary, thereby inscribing the possibility of an other-respecting and embracing community. Through a critical interpretation of the narrative affordances (story, symbol, character, etc.), Ifeakandu's investment in reimagining African future is unveiled.