Presentation Schedule
The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other (94429)
Session Chair: Chayanika Uniyal
Saturday, 12 July 2025 16:40
Session: Session 4
Room: UCL Torrington, B07 (Basement Floor)
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
In exploring the fictional representation of the experiences of Black gay men and women, it is important to examine how these Black writers or writers of color connect the concepts of race, gender, and sexuality in their narrative. Any writing that interlocks the above concepts initiates identity politics, minoritarian subjectivity, and equally important, a subaltern discourse. Literary scholars such as Ifi Amadiume, Frantz Fanon, Judith Butler and Sylvia Tamale argue that the subject of gender intersects with race, and that gender also cuts across sexuality. Interestingly, unlike Tamale and Butler who posit that gender, sexual, and racial identities interlink (2020, p. 5-6, and 1999, p. 6), Amadiume and Fanon contend otherwise. They insist that gender intersects with race, but that race does not interweave with sexuality. For instance, Homi K. Bhabha in his Forward of Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Mask (1986) writes that Fanon ‘speaks most effectively from the uncertain interstices of historical change: from the area of ambivalence between race and sexuality’ (p. ix). Similarly, Amadiume vehemently rejects Audre Lorde’s idea about both the possibility and practice of gay sex in women marriages in Africa. Despite their rebuttals of Black gayness, these two literary figures, Fanon and Amadiume remain invaluable in literary discussion of race, gender, and sexuality. This paper contributes to debates regarding why Black queer Europe remains marginal/the dearth of African/Black queer studies. I therefore use Fatima El- Tayeb’s theory on Black/women of colour feminism and queers of colour critique to analyse Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other.
Authors:
Chigozirim Nwaosu, University of Surrey, United Kingdom
About the Presenter(s)
Chigozirim Miracle Nwaosu is currently a doctoral student at the University of Surrey, Guildford.
Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chigozirim-nwaosu-09084b182?utm_
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