Sex Outlaws: Challenges to Homophobia in Stanley Kenani’s ‘Love on Trial’ and Monica Arac de Nyeko’s ‘Jambula Tree’

This paper examines Malawian writer Stanley Kenani's 'Love on Trial' and Ugandan writer Monica Arac de Nyeko's 'Jambula Tree' as entries in a growing field of literature that attempts to define a restorative queer aesthetic. Employing Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia, the examination aims at unravelling multiple narrative voices regarding homosexuality within the narratives. The discussion illustrates how the authors simultaneously highlight the instability of homophobia in the contexts of the stories, as well as the existence of multiple perspectives challenging the dominant homophobic rhetoric.