Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh

Blessings is the sum total of over ninety percent of queer Nigerian and Ghanaian experiences—if not the entire African experience.

It’s one thing to love a child, but it’s an entirely different thing for the same child to feel loved. The boy is young. He’ll get a lot of ‘buts’ in his lifetime. A home is the last place a child should feel conditionally loved.

This quote from Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s Blessings did something to my brain. It’s so apt, so painfully true. It captures what a home should be for a child and how often parents fail to make it one.

Thoughts

Blessings is the sum total of over ninety percent of queer Nigerian and Ghanaian experiences—if not the entire African experience. No additions, no subtractions. That’s just what it is. And in many cases, it could be worse.

Obiefuna, in comparison to others, had it lighter. Still, my heart broke while reading this.

A moving story

Ozoamaka reminded me of Gold’s mum from Vagabonds! She knew her son, loved him wholly, and stood by him, no conditions attached. She was a force!

I’m so glad that Obiefuna had her, and that she had him. Their relationship was soft, tender, and deeply moving. It made her withering away all the more heartbreaking.

Queerness in African society

Blessings peels back the layers of what it means to be queer in this part of the world. First, there’s the family where you are treated as if you don’t matter, erased from the unit that should protect you.

Then, there’s society, where you must constantly hide just to be accepted.

I thought deeply about how the book ended, about how queer relationships can blossom, but only in secrecy, confined to the walls of a bedroom. About how, more often than not, they end with one person forced to marry a “shield” just to survive.

I think about how queer people are often violently uprooted from their roots, homes, and communities and forced to relocate to strange lands to live their true selves. It’s a heartbreaking reality because it robs them of everything, their families, their homes, their friends (if those even exist), leaving them with no choice.

Wrapping up

This book broke my heart in many ways. Every day, these stories serve as a brutal reminder of how cruel this part of the world is to people whose only crime is love.

Blessings is deeply moving, necessary, and urgent. Everyone should read it. Everyone.