Calling him “the most famous of a batch of young Kenyan writers who are unafraid to challenge both foreign and homegrown perceptions of their country,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently named Union Writer-in-Residence Binyavanga Wainaina to its list of people around the world worth watching in 2008.
He joins such global newsmakers as Presidents Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina; Cuba’s Fidel and Raul Castro; Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak; and U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus.
A week after being cited by the Atlanta newspaper, Wainaina was tapped by the BBC in London, The New York Times and the London Guardian to comment on the political unrest in his native country.
Wainaina was scheduled to teach three classes this term, but now remains in Kenya.
In his interview with the BBC Newshour on Friday, Jan. 4, he said, “The framework we live in, the definition of Kenya, the constitution we have, we’ve known was unwieldy and wasn’t working for us. Finally, it ran out … that’s what happened and when it did, the state became naked, we saw it in one crazy day and everything got peeled away. So, for me, in a strange sort of way, this is a kind of nation-forming moment.”
In Sunday’s Times, in an op-ed titled “No Country for Old Hatreds,” he wrote, “For 40 years we have been dancing around each other, a gaseous nation circling and tightening. The moment is now to make a solid thing called Kenya.”
And in a piece in Saturday’s Guardian, Wainaina wrote: “We all want peace, and all civil leaders should speak loudly to their own constituencies. Baying from across the bridge does not do much. Nations are forged through situations like this. Leaders are made. We have maybe been play-acting nationhood. Do we want a common state? Do we really want this? The time has come to decide.”
Wainaina’s latest honors capped a year of accolades and recognition. In the fall, he was a guest and speaker in the Partnership-with-Africa Conference, hosted by German President Horst Koehlerin, and a panelist at the New Images of Africa Conference in Oslo, Norway, hosted by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He also spent time in Marfa, Texas on a Lannan Foundation scholarship.
Last summer, Wainaina was a guest contributor to Vanity Fair’s special issue devoted to Africa and wrote an essay for Harper’s. He was a finalist in fiction for a National Magazine Award. Last January, he drew worldwide attention for his satirical piece for the British literary magazine Granta “How to Write about Africa.”
Wainaina, who earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in England, is the founder and editor of Kwani? (So What?), Kenya’s first literary magazine.