The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn is hosting an in-person reading group on West African literature, “West African Literature: Secrets, the Surreal, and the Sea,” led by writer and artist Magenta Naaku. The group meets for four Tuesday evenings, from 6:30 to 8:00 pm EDT, on November 10, December 8, January 12, and February 9, at the Center’s space at 15 Lafayette Avenue.

The group centers on novels by West African women and femmes, written by Ghanaian and Nigerian authors, that take up queer identities, generational curses, femme freedom and pleasure, family secrets, and the lasting impact of slavery in both America and Africa. According to the Center, the books challenge outdated social and interpersonal dynamics while also celebrating African futurism, queer joy, and the expansiveness of femme desire.

Each session is paired with one book and one theme from the title:

  • Session I, The Sea: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. The multigenerational novel-in-stories follows the descendants of two half-sisters in Ghana, Effia and Esi, whose paths diverge when one marries an Englishman and the other is sold into slavery.
  • Session II, Secrets: The Teller of Secrets by Bisi Adjapon. A coming-of-age novel about Esi Agyekum, a young Ghanaian-Nigerian girl who can’t understand why secrets and lies are so normal in her family, and who pushes back on tradition in her pursuit of independence and pleasure.
  • Session III, Secrets: Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde. A work of queer Nigerian life and love, following a pantheon of characters who choose themselves, build chosen families, and weigh the cost of conforming.
  • Session IV, The Surreal: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor. Zelu, a disabled Nigerian American woman tired of rewriting the same book, pivots to writing an Afrofuturist odyssey that unexpectedly takes off.

Participants should read Homegoing in full before the first meeting on November 10. Naaku describes the group as discussion-based, with room to read favorite passages aloud, share interpretations, and even speculate about the characters’ lives beyond the page. She will offer guided questions, and everyone is welcome to pose their own.

Naaku is a Black queer writer, multidimensional artist, performer, and educator from Brooklyn. Their art contemplates Black myths, sexuality, freedom, Afrosurrealism, and the elasticity of Black femme embodiment, and they use poems, portraits, performance, and video to explore how imagination, pleasure, and Afrofuturism can be tools of liberation and resistance. Published under the name Alisha Acquaye, they have appeared in Carve, the Iowa Review, and Plentitudes Journal, among others, and have taken part in the Bandung Residency, StoryKnife Writers Retreat, Tin House, and the Rhode Island Writers Colony.

Registration is open on the Center for Fiction’s website, with a “With Books” option that includes the four titles at a 10% discount from the Center’s bookstore and a “Without Books” option. The Center also offers a limited number of need-based scholarships that cover 50% of tuition. Scholarship recipients are notified one week before the first meeting.