Celebrated Kenyan novelist Binyavanga Wainaina is more than an acclaimed author. He is an activist storyteller who has decided his form of leadership will be to start necessary conversations that will awaken his fellow frightened, slumbering Africans.
Wanina won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002 with his short story, ‘Discovering Home’. In April 2014, Wainaina earned a spot on the annual TIME 100 as one of TIME Magazine’s “Most Influential People in the World. He is the founding editor of the influential Kenyan literary magazine, Kwani? And has written for the New York Times, National Geographic, and the Guardian. He was until recently, the director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.
His TEDxEuston talk focuses on his coming out of the closet as gay and how that has influenced his understanding of how he is supposed to lead the continent forward.
Inspired by the death of a dear friend and the enactment of the Nigerian “anti-gay” law, acclaimed Kenyan memoirist and author of the satire ‘How to write about Africa’, Binyavanga Wainaina, announced he is homosexual in a memoir entitled ‘I am a Homosexual, Mum’.
This announcement undoubtedly caused a storm on a continent that is still socially and religiously conservative. Wainaina lives in Kenya , “a country that demonized homosexuality,” he says. Additionally his announcement coincided with a wave of anti-gay laws passed by various countries in Africa.
Three years ago, Wainaina missed a chance to tell his father about his sexual orientation.
“Dear Baba, we’ve been needing to talk. We haven’t really had the chance to talk since you died three years ago, and I thought today would be a good day,” began Wainaina at TEDxEuston 2014. He wore a grey coloured jacket over a black vest on a pink tutu skirt. The skirt matched his pocket square pink dye on the vestiges of a Mohawk. Wainaina is known for his bold hairstyles.
“Of course you may be aware that we had a conversation in January with mum about me, and about stuff in general,” he continued referencing his memoir, ‘I am a Homosexual, Mum.’ In April 2001 Baba, I’d just come back from Cuba, for spring break. I’d gone of course to misbehave, and I had a lot of fun,” said Wainaina with a slight mischievous grin to an amused audience. “In fact, it was difficult getting out because I didn’t know in Cuba you couldn’t use an American credit card. And I had to rush back on that Sunday to get back to teach on Monday, [Wainaina had visiting lectureships in America and was director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at Bard College] and on Monday, my head felt weird. I thought ‘Ah! Too much rum.’ My body wasn’t moving properly, things were awkward.”
Wainaina visited a hospital for an MRI. The result showed he had suffered nine small strokes. He was subsequently scheduled for surgery. He informed his father, who scared for the life of his son, reached out to his sister – Wainaina’s aunt – to save his son.
Though Wainaina went home to Nairobi after recovering from his surgeries, he did not see his father. Instead he went into hiding, from family and friends because he felt unusual and disoriented. It turned out this was a reaction to some medications prescribed for him.
It was on a trip to Ghana that Wainaina realized he would never speak to his father again. On July 7th, the anniversary of his mother’s death – he got a call that his father had suffered a stroke. He died four days later. “Was it you saying, it’s time to be with mum again? Eleven years later? Why that day” Wainaina asked in his talk, a puzzled look on his face.
“We also need to talk about the fact that I’ve taken to wearing skirts, and clearly this is going to you know… this must bring you some measure of consternation. And then of course, because I didn’t have the chance really to talk to you about it, I decided to bring it up to the whole bloody planet.” Wainaina said in his talk, speaking directly to his father of his daring visits to Nigeria, and then Senegal where he explained that though an exhibition of homosexuality was shut down, he swam and enjoyed himself. The whole experience has made Wanaina want to be an adventurer, and not a shy, timid son.
“Shiro was brave, James was brave, Chiki was brave, I really wasn’t the brave one. But I feel like now, my season is beginning,” an amused Wainaina said to an equally amused audience. “In this continent called mine and I am an African. I want no space to not welcome me.” Wainaina said he’s always heard a lot of noise around him since he came out gay, and mentioned to his father an interesting and funny story of how an important media group asked him to be a role model for school children.
“Baba, you can’t believe. I asked the guy, are you crazy? Don’t you know I’ve just come out as a public homosexual? This is Kenya. Are you mad? He’s like, no. I’ve just spoken to the literature teachers; the school says they want you there on Sunday. They’re shooting it live, and they say that you’re the most important alumni after the President, after President Kibaki. So you have to come.”
Wainaina agreed to go to the event, which was held at his alma mater, Mangu High School, but the school chaplain disrupted the event on religious grounds. To this, Wainaina thought, “Africa has changed. Or maybe it never needed to. That those people who came from that time of colonization to split us apart, until our splitting apart comes from within our own hearts. That inside the space of that Mangu High School, there was no such feeling, until the brokers. Until those fake, moral, hypocritical brokers of our freedom to be diverse, we, the oldest and the most diverse continent there has been. We, where humanity came from. We, the moral reservoir of human diversity …”
“Who are these appointed brokers Baba, who are they?” asked Wainaina. “Because wherever they sit, you see Boko Haram tearing us apart, you see political things tearing us apart. The simple acceptance of our rights to be, and be diverse, is the biggest and strongest thing to defend. Nothing will release our energy in this age of moving forward, than that baba.”
For Wainaina his own personal journey mirrors the path Africa needs to take: “So I’m here today, to tell you, that I would like us all to be adventurous for this continent. By adventuring for this continent, what for me I feel cannot be stood for is that there is any place one cannot go. And there’s nothing that one cannot imagine. And that we need to step out of the simple spaces of dogma that are fed by brokers, almost all of whom profiteer and gain political capital from rendering us apart and separate … For me, what has come to be, is to arrive at this place where I am living in plain light. I am not living in a dark continent. I will stand free, the way I need to be, as a moral being on the continent. And nobody will stop me from going where I will.”
