Books: For Pride

La Bastarda, The Not Wives, Mr. Loverman

La Bastarda, Trifonia Melibea Obon (Translated by Lawrence Schimel)

This is an incredible book of just 88 pages about women’s sexuality and pleasure, the price paid by those who insist on existing outside of patriarchy’s dictates, and how they create a chosen family and safe space in Equatorial Guinea.

It is the first book by a woman author from Equatorial Guinea to be translated into English and tells the story of Okomo, a teenage girl who is gaining an understanding of just how much the patriarchy fucks everyone except for the men whose dominance it serves. When she falls in love with a woman she comes to know that there is no word for lesbian in her language and learns how dangerous it is for those who insist on their right to exist outside of patriarchy and the dangers to anyone who refuses its heteronormative dictates.

Okomo lives in a village near the border with Gabon. As the afterward by Abosede George emphasizes, this makes Okomo’s story as “authentic” as it gets and upends charges that same-sex relations or love are “Un-African.” It beautifully captures and defines for Okomo and other characters what chosen family is and what a safe space is and where and how those exist.

In an interview with her translator for Electric Literature, the author says “The sexuality of the Fang woman doesn’t exist. Not even the heterosexual woman has a right to her sexuality, the only thing expected of her is reproduction, that’s it. My novel advocates for this right for women: the right to have a sexuality.”

Read this book.