‘These true stories are beautifully
told, the pain and honesty and
hope and joy in these accounts is
strong like a song’ – Stella Duffy
SHE CALLED ME WOMAN:
NIGERIA’S QUEER WOMEN
SPEAK
PUB. DATE: 24th April 2018
Published by Cassava Republic
Press PRINT ISBN: 978-1911115595
FORMAT: C-format PB, 135 x 216
mm EXTENT: 360pp
GENRE: Non-Fiction PRICE: £12.
99
Cassava Republic Press is proud to reveal the cover for ‘She Called
Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer
Women Speak’, a ground-
breaking collection of 25 first-
hand narratives from a cross
section of queer Nigerian Women.
Edited by Azeenarh Mohammed,
Chitra Nagarajan, and Rafeeat
Aliyu, these narratives give the
reader access to the narrators’
innermost thoughts and explore
what it means to be a queer
woman within Nigeria’s often
deeply conservative communities.
Through their words, we learn
of first loves, heartbreaks and familial pressure; the struggle to
reconcile religion, sexuality and
culture; the battle to be
comfortable with one’s gender and
sexual identity within
communities that can be hostile
and intolerant; the socioeconomic
pressures and universal difficulties
faced by women in Nigeria.
She Called Me Woman restores
agency, presence and humanity to
Nigeria’s queer women by
providing a platform from which
they speak for themselves. Women
from a wide range of class, religion
and educational backgrounds take the reader on a sometimes
celebratory, sometimes troubled
but always insightful journey into
their everyday life. The book covers
the experience of queer women
from across Nigeria, with narrators
coming from Maiduguri, Zamfara,
Imo, Oyo, Abuja, Plateau, Lagos,
Ondo and more. It restores balance
in the discussion on sexuality and
gender, which can unfairly favour
queer men. It brings into
mainstream consciousness the
existence and issues of queer
women in Nigerian society,
ensuring that their stories are told and their voices heard.
9jafeminista 