BY PETER SESAY

Buki Papillon, an African American born in Nigeria, is the winner of the second annual Maya Angelou Book Award for her acclaimed first novel An Ordinary Wonder. Upon hearing the heartwarming news, she said she felt profoundly honored because of all Maya Angelou stood for.

“So many of the themes that fill her work resonate in my own book: societal oppression, the longing for escape and freedom, the fight to overcome adversity and express your full humanity, the complexity of family bonds,” said the author. She was selected from four finalists in a pool of 100 submissions. The award includes a $10,000 stipend, and Papillon will conduct a book tour of the six participating universities this spring.

An Ordinary Wonder tells the story of an intersex Nigerian teen who hopes to escape family judgement by going to boarding school.

Named for revered, Missouri-born memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, the prize celebrates contemporary writers whose work demonstrates their commitment to social justice. It alternates annually between poetry and fiction, going this year to the author of a work of fiction.

The award was established in 2020 by the Kansas City Public Library, UMKC, the University of Missouri- Columbia, Missouri State University, and Northwest Missouri State, Truman State, and Southeast Missouri State universities.

In article she wrote at the beginning of this year exclusively for “The African Magazine” which was published in the magazine’s Black History Month issue, Papillon wrote:

An Ordinary Wonder is a heartwarming literary coming-of-age story about siblings and family and love, and about the ways our beliefs are shaped by culture and myth and tradition, and about the courage it takes to be yourself. It invites you to immerse yourself in the art, songs, poetry and proverbs of Nigerian and African cultures through the story of Otolorin, who is born intersex and raised as a boy when in her heart she knows she is a girl—or at least, not exclusively a boy.

Oto is a young Yoruba person navigating prejudices and misperceptions around her gender identity and the natural variations in anatomy that sometimes arise from being intersex, while aiming to achieve her own dreams. My first hope is for an accelerated change in attitudes so that news headlines about being intersex in African countries will read more along the lines of “Brilliant intersex artist on the predominant use of yellow in her paintings,” that is focusing on a person’s accomplishments and humanity, rather than “A World of Rejection!”, “Pain-filled lives!” which for too long have been the unacceptable reality.

My second hope is that whoever picks up this book will find positivity and beauty. That they will find it empathetic and, though heartbreaking at times, ultimately uplifting. It is a story that gives hope without denying reality. One that centers courage and the will to survive and even excel under harsh circumstances. Otolorin is both relatable and recognizable as a member of the culture and society she is born into and loves, even as she also refuses to be defined by the limitations of that society.

Books—fiction in particular—have been shown to be one of the best ways in which we build empathy with one another. Being intersex is not a problem. Society’s attitudes towards being intersex is the problem that needs to be fixed. Intersex bodies are just fine if people will just let them be. My third hope is that An Ordinary Wonder helps accelerate the healthy and progressive dialogue African societies and everyone worldwide should be having around being intersex. That readers who aren’t intersex, having experienced Oto’s story, will become more aware of their own attitudes and behaviors. Thomas Grattan, reviewing An Ordinary Wonder in the New York Times Review of Books, says of Oto: “Her story highlights the limiting dangers of the gender binary, while also reminding us of the power storytelling has to help us envision a more expansive and inclusive world.”

I hope, fourthly, that parents worldwide and especially in Nigeria where An Ordinary Wonder is set will read it and think oh, having a thriving intersex child is not in any way an emergency, a tragedy, some error of nature, etc. That they will conclude it is actually just fine to let their child grow up confident and whole as themselves without imposing any surgery or gender or societal norms or injurious sense of difference upon them. That their child is okay to live life and find a good path just like anyone else. They just need to do their parental duty and support their child and refuse to let anyone or anything pathologize them or make them see themselves as less or aberrant.

I hope An Ordinary Wonder inspires an intersex African person to say, I, too, want to tell my story in my own words!

And finally, I hope that readers worldwide will connect with Otolorin and enjoy reading her story simply because she is her compelling and interesting and amazing self.

The book won several praises before its publication early this year.