"The circumstances clearly differ from person to person, I can recognise, travelling around the continent, that there is no standard reaction. I know a guy, for example, the most visible effeminate gay man you can imagine, who runs a hair salon and supports his entire family in his village; he openly has his boyfriend, husband, and it is never an issue. I recently met a young man in Mombasa who had been brought up in the most disconnected, remote village. On the last day of primary school his mom brought him a magazine of wedding pictures and it was like, 'Are you the husband or are you the wife?' He told me he pointed to the wife, and his mother said, 'Fine, no problem.' When he went to boarding school, he was completely open about being gay simply on the strength of feeling of his mother's sanction. And, perhaps because of the confident way he carried himself, he said it was never a problem. But then you equally hear of other cases, where people are told, 'Never come home again', or they are found wives and forced to marry."
– Binyavanga Wainaina
Remembered as an iconic name in Kenya’s literary history, Binyavanga Wainaina’s voice remains relevant in his most famous satirical works as well as through his pan-African values. His nonfiction writing captured attention from around the globe as he dug his roots deeper in Kenya. An avid reader, he knew better than many the failings of the wider world in discussions of the wide continent of Africa, and he railed against them. Challenging stereotypes about African cooking, pointing out flaws in the very awards he applied for, and facing the failures of a larger literary world with equal parts humour and scathing heat.
Born on 18th January 1971 at Nakuru in Rift Valley Province, Kenya, Wainaina’s family was fairly comfortable, and his place in it was firmly that of the reader, the dreamer. It was well known that he was a favourite of his mother, who would allow him space and time to drift along throughout her life. His siblings too would hold him in affection and sometimes pull him back into line, he said of his childhood:
“It's like I was always not quite sure even how to move in space somehow; I would watch people and then copy them. I found it really hard to walk straight. My brother was always on at me for walking off the pavement. I guess I always expected people to bring me back into line."
Growing up, his grades in school gave his family high hopes for his future. Though there was a hiccup due to severe bullying at one school, once he switched schools his path smoothed out considerably. Along with his sister, he was sent to South Africa to go to university as the country was on the brink of its fight against apartheid.
Though there as a student, Wainaina soon began to fall out of his courses. Going to school to become an accountant, he would skip classes to stay in and read, or go out to party. This portion of his life is explored in his memoir One Day I Will Write About this Place, which delves into the angst and confusion of a man trying to find his direction.
For a while, he wandered in the direction of food, with a deep love for pan-African cuisine and a passion for sharing that love with people who otherwise would dismiss traditional African food. Running multiple businesses around food, he lit a spark when he started writing about it. While in South Africa as an illegal immigrant, he would start his career as a writer, sending in pieces to online publications. He wrote a letter to South Africa wrote about this time:
“I am writing to you to thank you for loving me when I lived in your country for ten years. Illegally. I thank you for taking care of me, for growing my mind. For stretching my heart. For building an African.”
His career as an author took off in 2002 partially because he refused a dismissal; submitting his work to Caine’s Prize for African Writing. He was initially rejected because they claimed they only took work from “serious journals” and he replied by writing:
“Now, in the last twelve months, if not a single collection of writing or short stories has been published in Africa, where do you think you’re going to get submissions from?”
They accepted his submission and he won the prize, using his winnings to start Kwani? an African literary journal that went on to become deeply influential.
The prize was also the beginning of a snowballing career which led to his most iconic piece How to Write About Africa. It started as a scathingly sarcastic email to the literary magazine Granta and ended up as a literary touchstone. Almost endlessly quotable, it encapsulated the sarcastic surrealist style of Wainaina, while also allowing his voice to cut through the cacophony of white voices discussing Africa.
While the whole piece is worth reading, any article discussing Binyavanga Wainaina would be incomplete without quoting at least a snippet.
“In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: 54 countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book.”
It is also worth quoting the follow-up piece he wrote about the impact of How to Write About Africa:
“Novelists, NGO workers, rock musicians, conservationists, students, and travel writers track down my email, asking: Would you please comment on my homework assignment / pamphlet / short story / funding proposal / haiku / adopted child / photograph of genuine African mother-in-law? All of the people who do this are white. Nobody from China asks, nobody from Cuba, nobody black, blackish, brown, beige, coffee, cappuccino, mulatte. I wrote “How to Write about Africa” as a piss-job, a venting of steam; it was never supposed to see the light of day. Now people write to ask me for permission to write about Africa. They want me to tell them what I think, how they did. Be frank, they say, be candid. Tell it like it is.
I have considered investing in a rubber stamp. I have imagined myself standing at the virtual borders of Africa, a black minuteman with a rubber stamp, processing applications — where YES means “Pass go, pay one hundred dollars,” and NO means “Tie ’em up and deport ’em.” It’s almost a sexual thing. They come crawling out of the unlikeliest places, looking to be whipped. I am bad, Master Binya, beat me. Oh! Beat me harder. Oo! They seem quite disappointed when I don’t. Once in a while I do, and it feels both good and bad, like too much wasabi.”
While How To Write About Africa is arguably the most famous piece written by Wainaina, it is by no means the only piece to be written into the Kenyan literary canon. One particularly relevant and powerful work comes as a lost chapter from his memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place.
His piece, I’m A Homosexual Mum, comes as a deeply personal exploration of queer grief as well as a coming out. Rewriting history so that he had come home to Kenya before his mother’s death instead of after, and telling her that he was a homosexual, is sweet and painful. He wrote that he knew of his sexuality from a young age but was not able to articulate it until he was much older. Writing:
“There will be this feeling again. Stronger, firmer now. Aged maybe seven. Once with another slow easy golfer at Nakuru Golf Club, and I am shaking because he shook my hand. Then I am crying alone in the toilet because the repeat of this feeling has made me suddenly ripped apart and lonely. The feeling is not sexual. It is certain. It is overwhelming. It wants to make a home. It comes every few months like a bout of malaria and leaves me shaken for days, and confused for months. I do nothing about it.
I am five when I close my self into a vague happiness that asks for nothing much from anybody. Absent-minded. Sweet. I am grateful for all love. I give it more than I receive it, often. I can be selfish. I masturbate a lot, and never allow myself to crack and grow my heart. I touch no men. I read books. I love my dad so much, my heart is learning to stretch.
I am a homosexual.”
If that were not clear enough he also went to Twitter to say:
“I am, for anybody confused or in doubt, a homosexual. Gay, and quite happy.”
Coming out at a time when homophobia was on the rise in Uganda and Nigeria, Wainaina was clear about his beliefs and intentions around this, having recently lost a close friend who was also gay to HIV. He said in an interview with The Guardian:
“If you are middle-class here, or international enough here, you can pretty much live as you want. It is an irony, that my friend had worked in the past for an NGO counselling people about the importance of being open about health issues, but he couldn't even tell us he was going through this thing. I thought, 'It is time: I have to write about it.'"
Still, in the same interview, he refused to allow Africa to be flattened into a monolith, saying:
"The circumstances clearly differ from person to person, I can recognise, travelling around the continent, that there is no standard reaction. I know a guy, for example, the most visible effeminate gay man you can imagine, who runs a hair salon and supports his entire family in his village; he openly has his boyfriend, husband, and it is never an issue. I recently met a young man in Mombasa who had been brought up in the most disconnected, remote village. On the last day of primary school his mom brought him a magazine of wedding pictures and it was like, 'Are you the husband or are you the wife?' He told me he pointed to the wife, and his mother said, 'Fine, no problem.' When he went to boarding school, he was completely open about being gay simply on the strength of feeling of his mother's sanction. And, perhaps because of the confident way he carried himself, he said it was never a problem. But then you equally hear of other cases, where people are told, 'Never come home again', or they are found wives and forced to marry."
He also pointed out the political nature of an issue that many claim to be based in nature:
"Partly homophobia is seasonal, particularly with regards to election seasons. And it comes in different packages. Sometimes it is packaged with abortion, for example, what they call a wedge issue, a for or against."
In the interview, he discusses the church as the source of much of the animosity towards queer people.
In his later years, Binyavanga Wainaina would experience health problems, some made public and others not. He shared that he was HIV positive in a Tweet on World AIDs day. Along with that, he also shared that he would be marrying his partner the next year. Unfortunately, in 2019 he would suffer the last of numerous strokes he had experienced in his life since 2016. He passed away at the age of 48.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Disclaimer: Some of the sources may contain triggering material
Adams, T., & @TimAdamsWrites. (2014, February 16). Binyavanga Wainaina interview: Coming out in Kenya. The Observer. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/16/binyavanga-wainaina-gay-rights-kenya-africa
Bidoun. (n.d.). How to Write About Africa II: The revenge. Bidoun. Retrieved February 28, 2024, from https://bidoun.org/articles/how-to-write-about-africa-ii
Binyavanga Wainaina. (n.d.-a). Lannan Foundation. Retrieved February 28, 2024, from https://lannan.org/bios/binyavanga-wainaina
Binyavanga Wainaina. (n.d.-b). How to Write About Africa: Collected Works (Achal Prabhala, Ed.). Random House Publishing Group.
Binyavanga Wainaina. (2011). One Day I Will Write About This Place (Reprint). Granta Publications.
Binyavanga Wainaina obituary | Binyavanga Wainaina | The Guardian. (n.d.). Retrieved February 28, 2024, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/02/binyavanga-wainaina-obituary
Binyavanga Wainaina: The early years. (2022, May 18). https://africasacountry.com/2022/09/binyavanga-wainaina-the-early-years
Dwyer, C. (2019, May 22). Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan Writer And LGBTQ Activist, Dies At 48. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2019/05/22/725657154/binyavanga-wainaina-kenyan-writer-and-lgbtq-activist-dies-at-48
How to Write About Africa. (2019, May 2). Granta. https://granta.com/how-to-write-about-africa/
Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina dies at 48. (n.d.). Al Jazeera. Retrieved February 28, 2024, from https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2019/5/22/binyavanga-wainaina-kenyan-author-and-activist-dies-aged-48
Mervosh, S. (2019, May 22). Binyavanga Wainaina, Pioneering Voice in African Literature, Dies at 48. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/obituaries/binyavanga-wainaina-dead.html
Press ·, T. O. · T. A. (2019, May 22). Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan author and LGBT activist, dies at 48 | CBC Books. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/books/binyavanga-wainaina-kenyan-author-and-lgbt-activist-dies-at-48-1.5144761
Tepper, A. (2023, May 29). A Provocative Satirist Left a Pervasive Legacy, Influencing African Writing. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/29/books/binyavanga-wainaina-how-to-write-about-africa.html
Wainaina, B. (2014, January 21). I am a homosexual, mum. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/21/i-am-a-homosexual-mum-binyavanga-wainaina-memoir