The Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina was many things in his short, frenetic life: memoirist and roving essayist, trailblazing editor and publisher, agitator and activist.
After winning the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002, he used his prize money to finance a new literary journal, Kwani?
(“So what?” in Nairobi slang), helping to promote a generation of Kenyan and African writers.
His 2005 essay in the British literary journal Granta, “How to Write About Africa,” eviscerated timeworn Western tropes about Africa and African writing.
Wainaina, who died in 2019 at age 48, became an outsize figure on the literary landscape, his omnivorous brilliance matched by ambition and vision on a continental scale.
Persons:
Binyavanga Wainaina, ”
Organizations:
Granta
Locations:
Nairobi, Africa