From the classrooms of Windhoek to the frontlines of Namibia’s SGBV, abortion, and LGBTQIA+ rights movements, The Chronicles of a Non-Binary Black Lesbian Namibian . . . In Love is Ndiilokelwa Nthengwe’s unflinching memoir of growing up different in a place that demanded conformity.

Namibian-Malawian, Nthengwe was told to stop playing with boys, asked “Are you a lesbian?” before she had the words to answer, and forced to choose between the God she loved and the girls she loved. She traces a life shaped by early, confusing crushes; relationships with women that concealed the truth from herself; a faith interrogated rather than simply inherited; and a family history marked by an absent father and a mother whose love never wavered.

As the book moves from personal reckoning to public struggle, Nthengwe takes readers across Namibia - “from the Orange to Kunene, from the desert to the sea” - into the heart of SGBV, abortion, and LGBTQIA+ advocacy, culminating in the fight for justice for Shannon, a case that lays bare the cost of being seen and unseen at once.

Tender, funny, furious, and hard-won, this is a story of becoming whole: the family we lose and the family we build, the faith we abandon and the faith we remake in our own image, and the long, imperfect work of falling in love - with another person, and with oneself.

Content note: this memoir includes depictions of homophobia, grief, violence, loss, and love.

Chronicles of a Non-Binary Black Lesbian Namibian...in Love, The

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