LAGOS RISING

Africa's biggest city is a powerhouse of art, culture, and fashion. Shirley Nwangwa reflects on her relationship to her family's home and to her Nigerian identity, while photographer Ike Edeani captures the creative scene.

- Shirley Nwangwa

THE LAST TIME I traveled to Nigeria, I was seven years old. It was 1994 and my parents, who had emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1980s, had not returned home since. They were eager to introduce their four daughters-including me, their second oldest-to their family.

In the town of Port Harcourt, the capital of my parents' home state of Rivers, my sisters and I were dropped into the arms of cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends who had been waiting years to squeeze, kiss, feed, and spoil us-and also introduce us to our "Nigerianness." My parents had spoken some Igbo to us when I was learning to talk, but I had already lost the language. I stared blankly into the eyes of dozens of brown-faced, white-toothed strangers, while my older sister, who was still fluent, translated. "Where are you from?" I was asked. "America," I would reply, a bit confused. I was promptly told that I was not an American, but a child of Nigeria.

BEING IN NIGERIA may afford me the luxury of being unapologetically Black, unlike in the white spaces that I navigate in the United States. But most of my extended family in Nigeria doesn't know that I'm gay. And, in Nigeria, being openly gay is an actual danger. In 2014, Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan signed the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, and since then, authorities have carried out mass arrests and have looked the other way as citizens commit violence against Nigerians suspected of being gay. Many of those accused of violating the law have been charged with either planning, celebrating, or participating in gay marriage or simply appearing queer. The penalty for a conviction is imprisonment for up to 14 years.

In my early 30s, I moved from the Midwest, where I was born and raised, to New York City. I was both exhausted and excited. I had spent years denying my creative passion and my identity, but I was going to be a writer, and in one of the gayest cities in the country.