Postcolonialism Goes Queer: Concealments and Disclosures in Dinaw Mengestu’s All Our Names

Abstract

Abstract:This article discusses All Our Names, the 2014 novel by Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-born, American immigrant writer. The narrative focuses on two figures: a young Ethiopian dreamer caught in the postcolonial military struggle in Uganda who later seeks safe haven in the US, and a single white American woman in her early thirties named Helen, a social worker at Lutheran Relief Services. Such a configuration certainly suggests the relevance of the postcolonial perspective, but in the novel, issues of race and postcolonialism are intertwined with the identity crisis aggravated by the ethnically polarized world of small-town America. Yet the identity that is destabilized is not merely racial but also sexual, through the convoluted and illicit erotic relationships in which the characters are enmeshed. This article analyzes the concealments of sexual identities and the struggles of the characters, who are reluctant to disclose their selves and the true nature of their relations with each other, first in the context of cultural dislocation engendered by involuntary migration to the United States, and then in the postcolonial setting of war-torn Uganda