Throughout the book, you’ve included Nsibidi, a written script of sorts indigenous to what is now southeastern Nigeria. Talk to me about the importance of incorporating that language component into the book.

During college I double majored in biomedical engineering and history, so I was really curious to understand that historical component also. When I was hearing, "This is not our culture. There aren't gay people in Nigeria." I took that as a historical question. And so I did a lot of historical research trying to learn about precolonial sexuality and gender on the African continent and specifically within a Nigerian context. I found dozens of examples, clearly. Part of that research I found that there was a precolonial writing system in Southeastern Nigeria, which is where my family's from. And I didn't know that we had a writing script. So I became really curious to learn more and just delving into the writing system, I found that there was a symbol, which is the cover of the book, which represents two women lying in bed together holding each other. I'm like, "Well, they're saying that this doesn't exist, but literally our precolonial writing system right here is showing that there was same-sex affection." It was a part of the writing system. It was a part of the culture. It was accepted. So I wanted to incorporate these precolonial symbols into the work to not only reify the fact that we've always existed as queer African people, but also to place contemporary queer and trans African people within an African cosmological framework.

Photo Caption: Po, Brussels, Belgium 2017