The first part of this book has presented the narratives of twelve gay and trans refugees from Uganda who at the time of sharing their stories lived in Nairobi, Kenya. As stated in the Introduction, these stories are part of, and contribute to, a recently emerging body of African LGBTQ+ life narratives, and they add to the building of queer African archives. Having shared these life stories, Part II of this book engages in what we call an inter-reading of the life stories with select biblical stories. The present chapter offers an account of the rationale for, and methodology underlying the research presented in this book. First, it discusses the significance of LGBTQ+ autobiographical storytelling, relating this to traditions of feminist, postcolonial, and queer activism and scholarship, specifically in African contexts. Second, it examines the status of the Bible as an authoritative religious text and a popular cultural archive in contemporary Africa, explores biblical hermeneutics of liberation, and discusses some examples of using biblical texts for purposes of community empowerment and social transformation. Third, it introduces the specific approach of community-based participatory research that was followed in this project and outlines the process by which community members creatively engaged the selected Bible stories, transforming them into plays that set the stories in their own present-day context.

The significance of life storytelling

The use of autobiographical storytelling has a long tradition in feminist, postcolonial, and queer activism and scholarship. This has to do with the ability of storytelling to render visible the lives, and to make heard the voices, of those who hitherto remained marginal, if not invisible and unheard, in academia and in society at large. For marginalised people and communities, as the feminist philosopher Shari Stone-Mediatore puts it, life storytelling has great political and epistemological significance as it produces ‘knowledges of resistance’: