While “undoubtedly a key leader” of Africa’s literary renaissance, writes the marvellously-named Siena Sofia Magdalena Anstis in Uganda’s The Independent, Kenya’s Binyavanga Wainaina “repeatedly denies its existence”.
Apparently Wainaina would prefer that the word “African”, in the phrase “African literature”, be dropped altogether, lest books from the continent become too closely associated with the identity of their authors, rather than the quality of their contents.
Wainaina is a gentleman malcontent, then - who manages to get in a dig about Margaret Atwood, and to prognosticate about the future of fiction (think: cell phones), in the course of his “Af Lit” chat with Anstis:
Binyavanga Wainaina is a literary legend in his home country Kenya and abroad. Author of “How To Write About Africa” and founding editor of “Kwani?”, a Kenyan magazine responsible for launching some of the continent’s greatest writers,- Wainaina has given many budding authors an outlet for their work.
Almost always wearing bright African print shirts and sporadically swearing, Wainaina is an unexpected character. Currently, he is the Director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at Bard College in New York. His aim is to discover new African authors and help launch them both regionally and internationally. His familiarity with authors and publishers from Cape Town to Nairobi, Kampala to Lagos puts him at the center of the so-called ‘African literary renaissance.’
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