The Kenyan writer,
Binyavanga Wainaina is the author of the memoir, One Day I Will Write About
This Place. He teaches creative writing and is the director of the Chinua
Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at Bard College in the U.S.
He was in Lagos recently to help teach fiction to young writers from all over
Africa in the NB/Farafina Trust Creative Writers Workshop, which ended with a
literary event at the Grand Ballroom of Eko Hotel and Suites. He took time to
speak with ANOTE AJELUOROU on some issues regarding literary engagement on the
continent. Excerpts:
What is the state of
writing in Kenya at the moment?
I think these are the most exciting times since the 1990s.
There’s a lot of new, independent publishing going on; online writing is very
vibrant, dynamic and fast-changing. A lot of writers are now writing poetry,
writing fiction, writing for TV and films and a lot of things. There are online
publishers like Kwani? and many
others going on.
How has your memoir, One
Day I Will Write About This Place been
received in Kenya?
Good! I think we sold close to 500 copies the first day at
the launch. It has actually been wonderful; I’m very, very happy. I can’t be
happier.
Tell us something about
your directorship at the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and
Languages at Bard College,U.S.?
It’s wonderful. We’re in the middle of a project called Pilgrimages, where we’re taking 13 African writers to 13 cities
to write 13 books. It’s going to come in a series in a couple of years. I’ll be
writing about Accra, Ghana; so many different writers are writing about other
cities. The idea came from the African World Cup that was held in South Africa
in 2010; we just want to celebrate our cities and for Africans to be able to
say, ‘I know my place’, especially when we meet in a place like London or
Paris.
We can cay that the books are compatriots as they explain
these cities both to those who reside in them and others coming to them.
Ngugu wa Thiong’o is the
most prominent writer to have come out of Kenya. What is your relationship with
him?
Oh, lovely, lovely! Oh gosh; I’m mean, I became an Ngugu fan
very early. I can’t even begin to explain how much he has affected me. You
can’t imagine how very profound his influence on me is. And, his works tower
very high, and continues to dominate.
And you are from a
minority tribe…
No, no; I’m
Kikuyu, too, like Ngugu. But Kikuyu is not a majority either. You can’t even
plan down one agenda along clan lines in Kenya; there are different clans, of
course. The numbers are there, but not a majority.
In your book, you talked
about the violence that erupted in the last election. How much has Kenyans
learnt from that horrific experience?
On the question of the violence that happened in Kenya, we
hope that it is something that will not happen again. It shook us from our
complete complacency. It’s sad that such experience happens often in Africa.
The issue is that there’s a lot of bad politics and corruption and laxity in
the polity, especially among the political elite in Africa. The violence raised
the stakes for us. So, it was bad, but it was good for us in the long run.
So, it will make us to grow stronger and help us to learn to
accommodate one another in the future.
Most of the literary
voices on the African continent are coming from outside the continent. Writers
like you, Chimamanda Adichie and many others reside abroad. Is this a good
development?
The thing is that people make a mistake because they don’t
know where you are. I think Chimamanda resides more here in Nigeria; I spend
most of my time in Kenya; in fact, six months of the year and I travel all over
the continent. We come back a lot; I retain my Kenyan passport; I don’t have a
Green Card. I don’t have an American passport. We propagate African literature
wherever we are, in Africa and wherever.
What has happened is that many people are returning and
finding their way and are giving back. And what is more important; let’s not
talk about the writers that are out there. There is an exciting new generation
of writers that have come out of Africa in the last few years, who are
homegrown talents that are going international.
So, what’s next after One
Day I Will Write About This Place?
I don’t now; it could be anything, maybe science fiction.
I’ll surprise you. Science fiction because I like to try new things; I love
doing new things. So, look out!
IN January 2007,
Wainaina was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a "Young
Global Leader" -
an award given to people for "their potential to contribute to shaping the
future of the world." He subsequently declined the award. In his rejection
letter, he wrote: "I assume that most, like me, are tempted to go anyway
because we will get to be 'validated' and glow with the kind of
self-congratulation that can only be bestowed by very globally visible and
significant people, and we are also tempted to go and talk to spectacularly
bright and accomplished people – our 'peers'. We will achieve Global
Institutional Credibility for our work, as we have been anointed by an
institution that many countries and presidents bow down to.
“The problem here is that I am a writer. And although, like
many, I go to sleep at night fantasizing about fame, fortune and credibility,
the thing that is most valuable in my trade is to try, all the time, to keep
myself loose, independent and creative...it would be an act of great
fraudulence for me to accept the trite idea that I am 'going to significantly
impact world affairs”.
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