“Is my Queer Body Not Strong Enough?”: The Pan African anthology hoping to amplify LGBTQ+ African voices

According to the Human Dignity Trust (2022), LGBTQIA people are still criminalised in 32 of Africa’s 54 countries. This is despite 30 African countries ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). For most LGBTQIA people, living in the shadow of the dominant traditional values that stand against their identity can be lonely.

However, it is not only this loneliness that Dr. Layla Cassim and Dr. Meryl C. du Plessis, editors of Is My Queer Body Not Strong Enough? Pan-African Writings & Artwork, sought to shed light on while working on the anthology. In the foreword to the book, Dr du Plessis emphasises that this journey is not only about the heartache but also about the connection, love, and laughter that come along for the ride.

She writes, “Those heartbreaks are there, yes, but so are support, solidarity, communion, connections through honesty, vulnerability, sexiness, sauciness, and laughter.” The 95-entry anthology is a multimedia project that aims to embrace the diversity of its contributors by setting minimal limitations on their stories and creativity while taking great care to not limit representation to only a minority of LGBTQIA people: young, urban, and middle to upper-class people. 

“We cannot pretend that there is only one queer story,” Cassim says. 

Featuring 78 contributors from all walks of life, the anthology published in November 2022 covers various genres, from academic articles to personal reflections, poems, short stories, music, photographs, and videos, accurately portraying the complexities of LGBTQIA life in various contexts. The anthology’s title was carefully chosen from a line from Samukezi Mrubula-Ngwenya’s “Impotence and the Potency of Trying Again,” one of the stories from the anthology.

“The line immediately jumped out at me. It is incredibly powerful and can be analysed on so many levels. It highlights the physicality, vulnerability, resistance, and contested nature of queer bodies,”  says Cassim. “It centres queer bodies and our struggles and captures the essence of Deyana Singaram’s picture ‘Reflections,’ the cover artwork for the book.” 

Is My Queer Body Not Strong Enough empowers the voices of Black queer writers and artists, particularly Black female artists. One of the contributors, Gomolemo Sefotlhelo, for example, included a series of pictures to “exhibit the journey of a lesbian life through clothing in liminal spaces” to “capture a moment of expression, self-awareness, and a proud lesbian without negativity or focusing on the prevalent hate crimes. Portraying lesbians as individuals and as a group to encourage unity, dignity, and equality”.

Cassim owns Layla Cassim ERS Consultants CC, which supports postgraduate students and emerging researchers. She had the idea to create a queer anthology while working on her fourth postgraduate toolkit. Working with Dr du Plessis, who she’s been married to since 2013, they attempted to weave the anthology’s stories together to find commonalities in divergent emotions, experiences, and forms of expression.

One of these stories is “To Whom It May Concern” by Nonkululeko Nxumalo, a bisexual writer from South Africa. The story details the painful struggle of Sinzwe, a fictional character who ends his life because of depression caused by being rejected by family and friends because of his sexuality. Nxumalo uses Sinzwe’s character to show how distancing children from queer realities can lead to depression and eventual suicide, one of the leading causes of death among young people, especially LGBTQIA youth.

Regarding the anthology, Nxumalo believes parents should let their children know the issues society is battling daily; she also asks parents to allow children to engage them on these matters as they are completely normal. “These are the things that need to be spoken about. Let children read to know what is happening in the world around them,” she says. “Parents need to be open-minded. Just because your child is reading such a book doesn’t mean they will become gay.” 

du Plessis shares that dealing with the difficulties of queer identity within your family is strikingly different from facing these social problems in public because intimacy is involved in the former. Your family deals with your humanity differently, which stems from the years of bonding as a family unit. Having grown up in a conservative and religious family, du Plessis is cognizant of religion’s role in influencing norms and beliefs around sexuality. She understands firsthand the challenges of expressing her sexuality freely when interpreted to be at odds with the religion where she found comfort, security and familiarity as a child. “It will always be a journey, and there has to be continuous work to foster freedom for all people, including queer people,” she says.

But inclusion is still a far-fetched reality for queer Africans, as many African countries go beyond having strict laws and punishments criminalising homosexuality to placing bans on publications related to LGBTQIA communities. These actions drive LGBTQIA communities further into the shadows by preventing their stories from being told and suppressing their identities. To circumvent such a situation,  Cassim, du Plessis and the contributors decided to make an e-book version of the anthology.

“We decided to have this book in both hard and soft copy to ensure it is easily accessible to anyone who can use virtual private networks to read it,” Nxumalo says. Cassim and du Plessis are independent publishers who want the autonomy to allow contributors more creative freedom to tell their stories in ways of their choosing. Beyond this, the anthology not only creates awareness but also seeks to facilitate healing for the contributors, making them feel like they belong.

While Nxumalo recognises that traditional African societies have customs they respect, she believes it is time for them to learn something else through this book and hopes they can change their way of thinking and become more accepting of minority communities. Cassim and du Plessis agree with her, emphasising that tradition is not static, but rather evolves with society. 

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“We must tell our own stories,” du Plessis says, quoting Audre Lorde, “Because tradition cannot evolve if people remain silent. The sheer breadth of different stories in every context shows that we are everywhere.” 

Nxumalo, in turn, adds, “Nobody has the right to shame us, castigate us, or even punish us just because we are different from them.” 

For Riaan Narshall Visman, another contributor whose piece is entitled “A Reflection of Self,” this collection allowed him to have a sense of belonging and be part of a shared humanity, united against the challenge of discrimination. He speaks about what the book means to him: “The collection gave me a platform to raise my voice at a time when I felt voiceless, hopeless, and unloved.” The book also helped Visman cope during a dark time and space in his journey. “I was financially incapacitated, jobless, and locked out of a safe space of love. It grounded me and made me understand myself better than ever.” His contribution came when he felt lonely, purposeless and ostracised by his family. Therefore, his story was a healing process in his journey of grief and hardship.

Visman parts with this thought-provoking message, “I would like people to see it as a testimony of myself. To look inward and accept self. To use it as a template for documenting our journeys with ourselves and our journeys with those we love and care for. We can’t control the vicissitudes of life. But we can control our responses to it. And to use mindfulness as the foundation of any interaction and relationships, we have with other humans. To practise self-love and self-care fiercely and unapologetically. And to remember that the opinion of others doesn’t define you. Accept and love your imperfections perfectly.”

For Cassim and du Plessis, representation is of utmost importance. Their goal is to nurture a space where people feel a sense of belonging and validation, “Hopefully, people can see themselves reflected in the stories and entries in this book,” says du Plessis. Contributions such as those by Samukezi Mrubula-Ngwenya and Witness Maluleke seek to shed light on the less frequently told stories of queer people by looking at the gay and lesbian experiences of middle-aged adults in rural areas of South Africa.

Ultimately, this creative work aims to champion courage and representation for African queer communities, from Nxumalo and Visman’s pieces to the other 76 impactful contributors, whilst highlighting that there is no single story, and it should never be portrayed as such. 

Edited and Reviewed by: Samuel Banjoko, PK Cross, Cassandra Roxburgh, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.