Mami Wata and Gender Fluidities in Contemporary Nigerian Literature

This thesis examines cosmological representations of gender nonconformity in three contemporary Nigerian novels through the figure of Mami Wata, a West African and diasporic water deity whose worship spans five continents. Mami Wata’s material worship, ritual practices and theoretical dimensions offer alternative modes for thinking gender within a distinctly Igbo and Afro-diasporic context. This thesis presents a method of reading with Mami Wata which simultaneously marks the deity’s presence within the text; examines her transformative dimensions in the narrative; and attends to the transnational, cross-cultural and interfaith exchanges which she reveals. Such a reading navigates the tension between localised Mami Wata practices and the deity’s global iterations as a means for thinking across multiple sites within and beyond the novel. This thesis conceptualises Mami Wata as a means of expanding considerations of human gendered embodiment to encompass issues of environment, human-nonhuman kinship, cosmological relations, literary form and material history. Mami Wata thus opens the possibility of thinking across multiple ontologies which operate in conjunction with each other, even as they resist reconciliation or harmonisation. Ultimately, this thesis argues that reading with Mami Wata can reveal African-oriented conceptions of being, embodiment and queer futurity.