The Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina, passed on Tuesday night in Nairobi after a short ailment, the BBC revealed. His demise was affirmed by Tom Maliti, the chairman of the Kwani Trust, which Wainaina established.

Binyavanga Wainaina, who won the 2002 Caine prize for African writing, made headlines around the globe in 2014, when he reacted to a a wave of recent anti-gay laws around the continent by publicly outing himself in a short article, published to mark his 43rd birthday. He likewise uncovered he was HIV positive.

Calling it the lost chapter” of his 2011 journal One Day I Will Write About This Place, the paper ‘I Am a Homosexual, Mum’ reconsidered the most recent days of his mom’s life, where he went to her deathbed and disclosed to her reality about his sexuality.

“Never, mum. I did not trust you, mum. And. I. Pulled air hard and balled it down into my navel, and let it out slow and firm, clean and without bumps out of my mouth, loud and clear over a shoulder, into her ear,” he wrote.

“All people have dignity. There’s nobody who was born without a soul and a spirit,” he said, in an interview with the Associated Press in 2014. “There is nobody who is a beast or an animal, right? Everyone, we homosexuals, are people and we need our oxygen to breathe.”

Binyavanga Wainaina was likewise known for his gnawing article How to Write About Africa, which incorporated the advice:

“Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title.

“Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress,” he wrote, signing off: “Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.”

Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, Wainaina’s friend, and chair of the Caine prize, said the author was,

“unbound in his imagining – reminding us, with art and characteristic playfulness, what English can look like when it’s an African language”.

“Unflagging in his generosity, unflinching and direct in his criticism, he produced work in his short life that will have impact longer-lasting than those whose time here is twice as long. On a deeply personal level, and as one who acknowledges the wings he gave to a generation of writers, I am bereft,” said Allfrey.

Sigrid Rausing at Granta said the magazine had published nothing so widely read or influential as How to Write About Africa, which she said,

“started as a letter to the editor, protesting about Granta’s 1994 issue on Africa, which, he wrote, was ‘populated by every literary bogeyman that any African has ever known’” – a claim, which was likely right.

“He could have become a poster boy for liberal literary Africa, a ‘cultural personality’, but he resisted turning himself into anything other than what he was: a writer, and an editor,” Rausing said. “And yet he had a profound influence, through Kwani?, his literary magazine, through his refusal to accept the othering of Africa and Africans, through coming out in a homophobic society and through advocating for feminist principles, for the idea of ‘upright Africans’.”

Rausing likewise adulated his “stubborn spirit, the refusal to give in”, just as his warmth, unequivocal quality, and knowledge. “He saw through things, and came out the other side.”

After Wainaina turned out, Time magazine in 2014 named him one of its 100 most influential individuals, with Nigerian creator Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie applauding him for having “demystified and humanised homosexuality” after the passing of a Kenyan friend,, whose family were kept from holding a church memorial: “He felt an obligation to chip away at the shame that made people like his friend die in silence.”

A year ago, Wainaina reported his engagement on Facebook thus:

“I asked my love for his hand in marriage two weeks ago. He said yes, nearly immediately,” he wrote. “Nothing has surprised me more than coming to love this person, who is gentle and has the most gorgeous heart.”

Wainaina’s passing comes just days before a long-awaited court ruling in Kenya this Friday on whether to annul laws that condemn gay action.

theguardian

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