One day, I will write about this place

May 22, 2019 10:46 AM

Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina passed away from a stroke last night at the age of 48. He is probably best known in the West for his essay "How To Write About Africa," (video). His memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place (excerpt), describes growing up in Kenya in the post-colonial Kenyatta and Moi era of politics, his experiences as a student in South Africa, and returning to Kenya around the post-election violence in 2007. In 2014, he published a lost chapter, "I am a homosexual, Mum", and he imagined the conversation he would have liked to have had with his father. He was one of Kenya's most vocally out gay men, and was also open about his HIV+ status.

In 2002, he won the Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story, Discovering Home (pdf).

He founded the zine "Kwani" ("So what?") in 2003 as an experimental journal for young writers in Kenya. The zine continues as the Kwani Trust, which among other things hosts competitions for young African writers.


Other writings and discussions:


-How to Write About Everything panel, described in the Johannesburg Review of Books

- "No Country for Old Hatreds" - commentary on the contested 2007 Kenyan presidential elections

THIS thing called Kenya is a strange animal. In the 1960s, the bright young nationalists who took over the country when we got independence from the British believed that their first job was to eradicate “tribalism.” What they really meant, in a way, was that they wanted to eradicate the nations that made up Kenya. It was assumed that the process would end with the birth of a brand-new being: the Kenyan.

Our Kenyan identity, so deliberately formed in the test tube of nationalist effort, has over the years been undermined, subtly and not so subtly, by our leaders — men who appealed to our histories and loyalties to win our votes. You see, the burning houses and the bloody attacks here do not reflect primordial hatreds. They reflect the manipulation of identity for political gain.

-The Writer in a Time of Crisis: Interview with Pambazuka News just after the 2007 post-election violence (July 2008)

- "Kenyans elected a president we felt could bring peace" - commentary on the 2013 election of Uhuru Kenyatta

For 45 years, through bad and good, Kenya remained stable, paid its salaries, and sometimes hobbled, sometimes thrived. The humanitarian crisis that followed the 2007 election was uncharted territory, the kind every nation in the world must face – a moment when your very existence is in doubt. We stopped being naive, stopped easily assuming that our existence and vibrancy must always be fought for. We learned, and continue to learn.

- Chinua Achebe's obituary

was in my 20s when I read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I was a hunter-gatherer reader who resented the obvious hurrump hurrump books that filled my dad's bookshelves. The idea of Chinua Achebe was so ubiquitous that he shared the territory reserved by my imagination for presidential portraits, school-teacher lectures, family Bibles and Reader's Digest-condensed books. When I read it I was already older than he was when he wrote it, and was startled at how wise, fresh and radical it remained. Its readability, its ability to make Umuofia the centre of the world makes it everybody's African village. There is no staleness in this idea. Proverbs from the book pound the Twittersphere and countless conversations. In English-speaking Africa, only Bible parables are as widely used. His assault on the novel in English remains a big shock to the novel itself. Our generation has work to do.

- From the New Yorker in 2014, by Alexis Okeowo, "Binyavanga Wainaina comes out."

Two weeks ago, when I heard, in Lagos, that Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan had signed an anti-gay bill into law, a Nigerian friend archly commented, “I don’t know why people are surprised.” She had a point: the homophobia and anti-gay violence in the country are among the worst I’ve encountered in Africa. Cell-phone videos have recently surfaced online of gays being publicly beaten by mobs. The move was jarring and disappointing, nonetheless. The law bans same-sex relationships, outlaws gay-rights activism, and mandates prison sentences of up to fourteen years for gays. There is little question that Jonathan, who is facing public disapproval over charges of inefficiency, corruption, and a badly fought war against Boko Haram Islamists waging a terror campaign in the north, seized the legislation as a popular, unifying distraction. The influence of American right-wing Christians on the drafting of anti-gay bills on the continent has also been significant... For the acclaimed Kenyan memoirist Binyavanga Wainaina, the author of “One Day I Will Write About This Place,” the news was too much. And it prompted him to make a declaration that he had been planning for months: he announced, in an essay that he called “the lost chapter” of his memoir, that he is gay."

- NYT obituary - "Kenyan author, LGBT activist Binyavanga Wainaina dies at 48."

- Guardian obituary - "Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan author and gay rights activist, dies aged 48."

- Daily Nation obituary - "Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina dies aged 48"

posted by ChuraChura (26 comments total)

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posted by CatastropheWaitress at 10:48 AM on May 22, 2019

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He was a bright star
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 10:49 AM on May 22, 2019

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posted by Kattullus at 10:50 AM on May 22, 2019

Two more pieces published on Africa Is a Country:

We are angels, victims of everybody

I am a Gujarathi Kenyan. I never ever ever criticize Kenyan Gujrathis. I am a Yoruba African. Yoruba Africans have never ever done a bad thing ever. Not One. I am an Igbo African. I cannot share in public my real anger about Igbo political leaders. I am an African intellectual who is silent when my King talks genocidal shit. I am a Gikuyu. We are angels, angels! Victims of everybody. In fact everybody else is fucked up.

Kenya is not a nation if we can't properly memorialize each and every citizen we lose

I want to go to a place. A piece of ground, also a place online, where we can find the names of all those who have died for Kenya since 1963. I want to know their names. I want to walk and walk listen and witness know the lives of those no longer visible to me, but whose blood mattered. I want the children I may once have to go there and visit and walk through our stories. I want all schools to go there.

posted by ChuraChura at 10:57 AM on May 22, 2019 [10 favorites]

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posted by lazaruslong at 11:00 AM on May 22, 2019

Aw, shit.

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posted by allthinky at 11:04 AM on May 22, 2019

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posted by carrioncomfort at 11:19 AM on May 22, 2019

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posted by LobsterMitten at 11:21 AM on May 22, 2019

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posted by GenjiandProust at 11:34 AM on May 22, 2019

Planet Binya has archived all his work that is available online.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:35 AM on May 22, 2019 [8 favorites]

Thank you for the most excellent obituary, ChuraChura
posted by hugbucket at 11:37 AM on May 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

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posted by hugbucket at 11:38 AM on May 22, 2019

I feel the strong urge to login to my old handle and leave a dot on their behalf too.
posted by hugbucket at 11:38 AM on May 22, 2019 [2 favorites]

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posted by praemunire at 12:10 PM on May 22, 2019

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posted by Fizz at 12:34 PM on May 22, 2019

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posted by kaibutsu at 1:18 PM on May 22, 2019

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posted by col_pogo at 1:43 PM on May 22, 2019

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His memoir led me to becoming a Brenda Fassie fan, which is hardly a drop in the ocean of his influence but had big ripple effects in my life.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 2:31 PM on May 22, 2019 [3 favorites]

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posted by TwoStride at 7:25 PM on May 22, 2019

This is really sad news. Thank you for taking the time to craft such a thoughtful and moving post.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:03 PM on May 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

His post colonial queerness was smart, and funny, and deconstructive, and deeply deeply powerful. His refusal to take shit from anyone was miraclous.
posted by PinkMoose at 9:08 PM on May 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

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posted by blue shadows at 11:10 PM on May 22, 2019

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posted by Pendragon at 1:50 AM on May 23, 2019

Another obituary, this one on Lithub by Billy Kahora

I quickly learned that everything with Binyavanga happened at warp speed but only starting in the afternoon and going deep into the night, an outright rejection of the Kenyan 9-5 ethos. He sat and started working in cafes from 4 p.m.—in those days, the Kwani? office was at Queensway House and he favored Trattoria, an Italian restaurant with outdoor seating. Work was meeting different people and talking Kenya and then the world. At this time he smoked Sportsman cigarettes incessantly. He continually drank coffee and then moved to Tusker beer. There, the Kwani? journal was commissioned and strategies were laid out to take over the world. He conducted interviews and ranted against anyone in Kenya he thought was policing who and what writers and literature could be. He obsessed about Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński’s racism. He asked me again and again what I thought had happened between Fourth Formers and Sixth Formers at Lenana school. He liked to work into the early hours of the morning and resurface again at the very earliest at lunchtime. And then another cycle would begin.

posted by ChuraChura at 6:48 PM on May 24, 2019

Mikkhail Iossel posted a rememberance of Waininaina on his Facebook page with a link to an interview they did.
posted by vespabelle at 6:12 AM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

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posted by mixedmetaphors at 8:27 AM on May 25, 2019