An Ordinary Wonder

An Ordinary Wonder

By Buki Papillon

Dialogue Books. $17

An inspiring and gut-wrenching story about an intersex Nigerian girl. With this page-turner, Papillon joins the chorus of African writers inventing a new language for unsilencing queer voices in African literature. Richly imagined with art, proverbs and folk tales, this moving and modern novel follows Oto through life at home and at boarding school in Nigeria, through the heartbreak of living as a boy despite their profound belief they are a girl, and through a hunger for freedom that only a new life in the US can offer. An Ordinary Wonder is a powerful coming-of-age story that explores complex desires as well as challenges of family, identity, gender and culture, and what it means to feel whole.