Queering Authoritarianism in Uganda: Dissident Sexualities and Tropical African [anti]-Aesthetics in Stella Nyanzi’s No Roses from my Mouth

• Published in: Etropic Vol. 23; no. 2; pp. 19 - 38
• Main Author: Akingbe, Niyi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: James Cook University 15-10-2024
• Subjects: female dissident sexualities; Museveni’s Uganda; queering authoritarianism; Stella Nyanzi; tropical African [anti-]aesthetics; “radical rudeness” poetics
• ISSN: 1448-2940; 1448-2940
• DOI: 10.25120/etropic.23.2.2024.4069

In this article, I argue that queering female sexualities as ‘dissident sexualities’ Stella Nyanzi in her collection of prison poems, No Roses from My Mouth (2020), harnesses the aesthetics of radical rudeness (insults) through expressions of humor, innuendo, and anecdote grounded in the Baganda cultural repertoire, to critique President Yoweri Museveni’s authoritarian regime in Uganda. Her poetry draws attention to queer sexualities grounded in stylistics of dissent. Humor in the prison poems allows Nyanzi to develop an audacity that alludes to the authenticity of her queer consciousness. To this end, the article teases out how radical rude poetics, a corollary of tropical [anti]-aesthetics, affords Nyanzi a literary platform to manipulate pejorative imagery, libidinous metaphors, subversive phrases, and lewd expressions entrenched in humor as political protest. More evocatively, the article asserts that within the context of tropicality, radical rudeness as pan-Africa’s anti-aesthetic response to the Western (English) culture of politeness is focused upon in No Roses from My Mouth as a literary fuse that expands tropical aesthetic’s critique of colonialism/postcolonialism in Africa to poetically confront authoritarianism in Uganda.