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Binyavanga Wainaina, the deeply influential Kenyan writer credited with founding the literary magazine and collective 

 and advancing the fight for LGBTQ rights in Africa, has died at the age of 48. The Caine Prize for African Writing, which Wainaina 


"Binyavanga 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," prize Chairperson 

"On a deeply personal level, and as one who acknowledges the wings he gave to a generation of writers, I am bereft."


Tom Maliti, chairman of the Kwani Trust, told 

 Wainaina died Tuesday night after an illness in Nairobi, Kenya's capital.
Wainaina stepped onto the world literary stage after his Caine Prize win more than a decade and a half ago — partly because of the win itself, which honored his "Discovering Home" as the best English-language short story by an African writer that year, and partly because of what he did with the winnings. The very next year, 2003, he founded 

, a literary magazine and loose collective of writers that has fostered the work of many other young Kenyan writers.
Two years after that, he instructed the Western world on "How to Write About Africa," in a witty, withering parody of the same name. The piece caught fire, and since 

, the essay has become perhaps Wainaina's most widely known work.


Wainaina also earned a reputation as an outspoken advocate of LGBTQ rights, both on and off the page. 


The Kenyan writer came out as gay in 2014 in an essay he called a "lost chapter" from a memoir he had 

 was no small feat for an author living in Kenya, where same-sex relationships have long been illegal.


In a bitter twist of fate, the country's highest court is expected to hand down a ruling just days after Wainaina's death  — on Friday — on whether to decriminalize homosexuality.


"I was finding reasons and excuses [not to write about being gay] for a long time, but I think sometimes you're just ready," Wainaina 

, referring to anti-homosexuality laws that had 

 in Nigeria as another reason why he wrote it. "But really, in a certain way, by the time I was hitting that send button to my friends to put it up on a platform, I felt this is one of the most successfully, put-together and honest pieces I've ever written."

The piece and his work as an activist that year earned him a nod from 

 for his inclusion, celebrated Nigerian author 

 went into further detail on the essay's origins.


"In December 2012, his friend — a fellow gay man who had also spent his life mired in pretense — got sick. Even as he lay dying, he could not tell his family that he was sick. His death broke Binyavanga's spirit," Adichie explained.

"The best-known Kenyan writer of his generation, he felt an obligation to chip away at the shame that made people like his friend die in silence."

The following years brought health problems for Wainaina, who suffered a stroke in 2015 and announced that he was HIV-positive in 2016.


Still, despite his ailments and the prevailing anti-gay laws of his home country, Wainaina found love: He announced last year that he would be 

.
"I do not fear death anymore. I just have one thing to do this year," he wrote last year, in a 

. Wainaina wrote the post just a few months before his engagement. 
"If I die anytime after that it is okay. I have already reconciled myself with that. I would like to live a long life after I do what I need to do this year. If I don't live for long after this, it is okay," he said. "Celebrate my life! Do not mourn me."  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Colin Dwyer

Author

The author founded a platform for young Kenyan authors and came out as gay in a place where homosexuality has long been illegal. "Binyavanga was unbound in his imagining," said a friend and colleague.

Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan writer and LGBTQ activist, dies at 48

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