I was born in Nigeria. Being gay was a taboo, a sin that no one talked about positively. It was a thing that could not be spoken about and that must be prayed away. In my younger years, pride only meant arrogance. I grew up in a very religious family so pride was also just the first of the deadly sins; the one that brought down Satan and the other rebellious angels.

The first time I heard about pride month and the pride parade, I remember being dismissive and not trusting of it. I remember saying skeptically, “so there is a parade for people like me? You mean we can come out freely and just march and show ourselves to the world without fear of being killed or arrested?”. I then felt joy. I decided to read more and find places this magnificent thing happened. I mean here I was, a young girl, still hiding her sexuality from the rest of the world. Still scared that she might be caught on one of her nights spent stealing kisses and beaten or worse. Finding out that in some part of the world I will be accepted; that in this other part of the world I can hold and kiss my girlfriend out in the open. In this part of the world, there is a month dedicated to people like me to show the different colors of our love. I was hopeful.

Pride represents joy and hope for me.

It represents liberation and identity as a performance.

Pride month for me is a time where I am reminded that I am allowed to shine as bright as I want to. It represents freedom and liberty.

The parade shows different queer people in all shapes and forms with different identities and that in itself is the validation I need to boldly tell the world that I will not be ignored nor will my light be dimmed.

I feel such joy during pride month.

I feel limitless

During pride I almost get to forget that navigating this world as a black queer woman is hard and sometimes harmful.

I get to just live because there is an unspoken rule that it’s the month for the gays so the straights better move; I love it.

People from different backgrounds and different identities show up for the parade looking so beautiful and colorful and it is such a beauty to behold.

Pride goes beyond the color of the rainbow. We choose the rainbow because it is something that comes naturally from earth. Like queerness, the rainbow is natural. The rainbow colors for pride mean different things to different people, most commonly; the hot pink color represents sex, red represents life, orange; healing, yellow- sunlight, green- nature, turquoise- art, indigo- harmony, and violet represents spirit.

The month marks the anniversary of the stone wall riot which took place in New York. We hear of amazing women like Marsha P Johnson who fought and marched to stop the policing of gay and trans bodies.

Pride month is a time for love and liberation. It is a time for me to be in community with people like me. Like the great black feminist lesbian poet; Audre Lorde wrote, “Without community, there is no liberation…but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist”. We get to see our differences during pride and we learn to respect, love and accept the differences.

Happy Pride people!!!