“A Matter Of Timing”
In 2013 Diriye Osman wrote Fairytales for Lost Children, a striking collection of short stories that follow queer Somali immigrants in Kenya and Britain. This chapter shows how Osman’s creates a radically queer migritude text through his complex philosophy of temporality, home, and freedom. It also examines instances of queer liberalism and liberal (in)tolerance of queerness in Somali writer Nurrudin Farah’s Hiding in Plain Sight (2014). Building on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Robert Reid-Pharr, and David Eng, this chapter argues that neoliberal globalization, nationalism, and the ways in which these forces necessarily manage or police movement cannot be disentangled from heteronationalist discourses and laws circumscribing sexuality, and that queer liberalism and liberal toleration of queerness both practice and promote intolerance.