Creative Challenges to the Narratives of Heteronormativity in Selected works of Contemporary Twenty-first Century Nigerian Literature

Frank, Sopuruchi Blessed (2026) Creative Challenges to the Narratives of Heteronormativity in Selected works of Contemporary Twenty-first Century Nigerian Literature. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis examines how selected twenty-first-century Nigerian novels challenge the social and cultural normalisation of heterosexuality in contemporary Nigerian writing. While earlier Nigerian literature largely rendered queer identities invisible, recent authors have begun to foreground queer experience, thereby unsettling the dominance of heteronormative sexual and gender norms. Through close readings of Jude Dibia’s Walking with Shadows (2005), Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees (2015), Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018) and The Death of Vivek Oji (2020), and Ani Kayode Somtochukwu’s And Then He Sang a Lullaby (2023), the thesis explores the diverse strategies through which contemporary writers contest normative constructions of gender and sexuality. The study draws on Queer Postcolonial Theory, which illuminates how colonial and indigenous patriarchal structures continue to constrain queer expression, alongside indigenous cosmological frameworks—particularly Ogbanje and reincarnation beliefs—that offer alternative conceptions of identity beyond binary gender categories. The analysis argues that each text disrupts heteronormativity in distinct ways: Walking with Shadows breaks the silence surrounding queer male identity; Under the Udala Trees re-routes female sexuality away from compulsory heterosexuality; And Then He Sang a Lullaby rejects patriarchal masculinity and patrilineal expectations while directly engaging with the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (2014); The Death of Vivek Oji reimagines identity through reincarnation; and Freshwater dismantles gender and sexual binaries through its portrayal of a subject constituted by multiple self. Collectively, these novels challenge prevailing sex-gender norms and expand the imaginative possibilities for representing queer lives in Nigerian literature. The thesis demonstrates how contemporary Nigerian fiction contributes to broader debates on identity, belonging, and the reconfiguration of gender and sexuality beyond the binary.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2026 10:07
Last Modified:	11 Jun 2026 10:07
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103352
DOI:

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