La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono

I didn't understand what it meant to be a man. If in the past I thought it was enough to have genitals dangling between one's legs, now I wasn't so sure. Because Uncle Marcelo's were like that, but nobody in the village considered him a man. So would the perfect man be one who fathered children? Of course not, I answered myself. My grandfather had done that, but in my grandmother's opinion, he couldn't be considered a man because he had proven himself unable to impose order within his family. Would a man be someone who subdued or dominated others? I didn't know, and I tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep, until I saw a vision of my mother walking before me. I followed her in silence, without asking about my father.

Okomo is una bastarda, a bastard-child: her mother dead, her father mysteriously absent, she is no one's daughter, and yet she is oppressed by the patriarchal claims of family. Her grandfather, an imperious jerk, sits her down and regales her with stories of the men in her family who became men the right way, by having children with their wives, properly married--and paid for. Meanwhile, he has taken a second, younger wife, and Okomo's grandmother spends all her time trying to find money to pay the curandera for a spell to get Okomo's grandfather into her bed again.

Against this backdrop, Okomo begins to learn the rigid rules of heterosexual coupling in the culture of the Fang people of Equatorial Guinea. She's strangely compelled by her uncle Marcelo, a "woman-man" who lives in the forest with his male partner, and who has invited the opprobrium of his family by refusing to impregnate his sister-in-law. (This demand may seem odd, but it underscores, like Okomo's bastard status, the way that the rigid laws of traditional family dictate the biological and genetic process, rather than the other way around.) Okomo, seeing how Marcelo is shunned, begins to fear for her future when she has her first lesbian encounter with her friend Dina.

La Bastarda is, as I understand it, the first book by a Equatorial Guinean woman translated into English, and it is banned in Equatorial Guinea. That's no surprise, given how critical it is of gender roles and sexual politics among the Fang. It is more interesting than good: the setup is rich and complex but the writing often amateurish. I was shocked when, after being invited into the forest by three older girls (including Dina), Okomo is invited to remove her clothes and get right down to having sex. That we're only told after the sudden forest orgy that Okomo has been lusting for Dina for a long time seems to underscore the sense that the plot is being made up as it goes along, and that the characters are being pushed around by the demands of the critique.

But for all that, La Bastarda is a fascinating document about the experience of LGBTQ+ people living under traditional African societies. For Okomo, liberation means leaving family altogether, and making a new family with Dina, Marcelo, and the two other girls--conveniently paired off after initially snitching on Okomo and Dina because of their jealousy--in the forest. The forest, away from the villages, is a magical place, a reversal of the image of the African jungle as a place of mystery or dark magic. La Bastarda makes one wonder about familiar Eurocentric explanations for homophobia and gender rigidity, and reflect on how a worldwide sex and gender rights movement might encompass experiences like Okomo's.