Introduction

Summary

How impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story. … Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity. … When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

About life stories and Bible stories

This is a book about stories. To be precise, it is about two categories of stories: life stories and Bible stories. It explores the creative process of putting particular life stories – of Ugandan LGBTQ+ (mostly gay and transgender) refugees – in conversation with select biblical stories – stories that the refugees themselves identified as inspiring and as speaking to their life experiences. This process of dialogue, or inter-reading as we call it, between life stories and Bible stories engenders a new body of stories, which we describe as sacred queer stories. In fact, we take each of the three bodies of stories that are central in this book to be both sacred and queer. This may be puzzling to some readers.

Obviously, the life stories of LGBTQ+ people are queer – queer as referring to perspectives that do not conform to, but challenge and subvert the norms of gender and sexuality in society. As the life stories presented in this book demonstrate, such non-conformance comes at a great personal cost. Many African societies, including Uganda, in recent decades have witnessed heated public debates about issues of homosexuality and LGBTQ+ rights, and increasing levels of socio-political homophobia, or ‘anti-queer animus’. In Uganda, this culminated in the passing of the infamous Anti-Homosexuality Act (early 2014). Although only short-lived, the Act and the underlying politicisation of homosexuality created a social and political climate in which many LGBTQ+ people no longer felt safe. Hundreds left (and continue to leave) the country for neighbouring Kenya, registering as refugees and entering a process of resettlement in a third country, through the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). This resettlement process is notoriously slow, and, in the meantime, they experience further marginalisation in Kenya, because of their refugee status and their sexuality.