Asylum: A Memoir & Manifesto

Activist Okporo debuts with a deeply affecting account of the trials he endured as a Black gay man seeking asylum in the United States. Alienated as a child in the 1990s by the theater of bravado and masculinity in his southern Nigerian hometown, Okporo joined the priesthood at age 18, hoping to find delivery “from any evil spirit that had possessed me with my attraction for other men.” Instead, he spent the next two years “hooking up with straight-passing men who carried big Bibles.” After leaving the church in his 20s to live openly as a queer man in Abuja, he quickly found work as an AIDS activist, but, eventually, his public efforts to destigmatize homosexuality made it dangerous for him to remain in Nigeria, even leading to an assault by a mob. From here, his story takes a swift turn as he recounts his path to find refuge in the United States. In clear-eyed prose, Okporo illustrates how, after being detained in New Jersey for six months without legal counsel, he navigated a turbulent road pocked with hypocrisy and cruelty until finally being granted asylum. Shirking a tidy story of hope, Okporo offers instead a resonant critique of what it means to be “free” in America, a place, where, he writes, “to succeed... [is] to adopt whiteness in all its form.” Readers will be galvanized by this resounding call for equality. (June)