"Now I am 'that guy,' the conscience of Africa"
November 22, 2024 1:56 AM Subscribe
How to Write about Africa is a posthumous collection of essays by Binyavanga Wainaina. The satiric title essay, which went viral in 2005, began as "rambling email to the editor" of Granta, as he recounted in How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge. After publishing a celebrated memoir in 2011, he published a "lost chapter" from it in 2014, I am a homosexual, mum. He was interviewed about that essay on NPR. He died in 2019. The posthumous collection was reviewed by Alexis Okeowo in the New Yorker and Jeremy Harding in the London Review of Books. The latter discussed Wainaina on the LRB podcast with Thomas Jones, highlighting the piece It’s Only a Matter of Acceleration Now, about interviewing Youssou N'Dour. [Many previouslies: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
Wainaina was reluctant to repeat generalities about being gay in Africa. The gloomy stats tell us that of the more than sixty states that still criminalise same-sex activity, nearly half are African. Discrimination against LGBT communities is one of the rare agendas on which citizens of African states and their governments tend to align, with spontaneous homophobic violence on the one hand and harsh legislation on the other. But Wainaina knew that if he went to town on the subject of African homophobia, a new round of Western finger-wagging aimed at ‘backward’ fellow Kenyans (and citizens across the continent) would follow.
posted by HearHere at 2:56 AM on November 22
Dobbs has also been cited by anti-abortion activists seeking to roll back legal rights in Kenya, Nigeria, and India, according to research compiled by the advocacy organization Fòs Feminista... The fact that the US rollback of abortion rights could give rise to both France’s protection of them and Uganda’s elimination of LGBTQ rights, Murray said, shows that Dobbs “is viewed as authoritarian”: Its power, in other words, lies in the hands of whoever gets to interpret—or resist—it.[motherjones]
posted by HearHere at 2:56 AM on November 22
I'd never read Wainana until today and now I'm hooked, thank you.
posted by terretu at 8:12 AM on November 22 [1 favorite]
posted by terretu at 8:12 AM on November 22 [1 favorite]
I find his style a little off-putting, but I like what he has to say. It’s like I enjoy his sentences a lot, and I get a lot out of his pieces, but I don’t love his paragraphs. On the other hand, a lot of other writers vex me more, so… I keep reading.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:20 PM on November 22
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:20 PM on November 22
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posted by chavenet at 2:25 AM on November 22 [3 favorites]