Eloghosa Osunde's Vagabonds! follows the lives of those who live on Lagos' margins: the downtrodden, the hunted, the used and abused: all those who must stay hidden to stay alive.
Lagos itself, personified by the cityspirit Èkó, is a city of masks and masquerade and intense packaging, so it's no wonder that the people there are used to wearing multiple faces."'Well,' Clement said. 'To work in Lagos, you have to give up something. Everybody does—even the high and mighty. Some give up their language, some their names, some their sanity, some their conscience, some their ears, their eyes, and so forth.'"
The characters in these stories shine as they struggle with realizing and living their true selves and eke out joy and love in the midst of pain and rejection.
While it often tended towards a verbosity that had me re-reading certain sections to reorient myself, the star of the show for me is the writing: Eloghosa Osunde is truly a master of her craft, inventively blending folklore and spirituality with the urban and contemporary, and all in a distinctive and utterly Nigerian voice coupled with witty, dry humor. What I love most is the optimism and hope that she brings out in these stories, especially in the last hurrah that is the final chapter.
Vagabonds! is a celebration of queerness and of living your truth, a story of things kept in the shame of the dark coming to glorious light.
"If anybody deserves to live, it read in the coming light, it is us. It is us, after all this dying we have done."
Check it out here: Vagabonds!
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