Novelist, short story writer, author and journalist Binyavanga Wainaina declared his homosexuality this past week in a short story entitled I am A Homosexual, Mum to protest the passage of anti-gay laws in Nigeria. Wainaina, the founder of the Nairobi-based literary network Kwani, writes, “”I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five,” he writes in the short story. “Nobody, nobody, ever in my life has heard this … I did not trust you, mum. I am a homosexual, mum.”
Nigeria introduced a new law earlier this month against homosexuality. Under the law, same-sex couples who live together or attempt to solemnize their union with a ceremony can be punished with 14 years in prison. “There is no country in the world with the diversity, confidence and talent and black pride like Nigeria,” Wainaina said, adding that the “anti-gay marriage law shames us all.”
Meanwhile, in Uganda (which borders Kenya), President Yoweri Museveni theorized that homosexuality was caused by a genetic flaw or from a need to make money.
While the author, who won the Caine prize for African writing in 2002 and penned the highly popular satire How To Write About Africa, has been widely supported on social networks for his strong stance, critics have been less kind about the short itself. They have called it confusing, leaping as it does between different ages and dreams, some real, others imagined. Calling it the “lost chapter” of his 2011 memoir, it is a re-imagining of the last days of his mother’s life, in which he goes to her deathbed and tells her the truth about his sexuality.
In an interview with the British Broadcasting System, Wainaina explained, “I can manage my life, you know, I’ll pretend and marry a lesbian and have children so the world that is African can see that you are pretending as if everything is OK. People contort the most ridiculous arrangements just so their mom doesn’t know. And I just [kind of] felt, especially with the Nigerian law, which is just anti-human, so that law was just made to use a really kind of extreme hate, the most extreme in my lifetime, to create political traction for a party that has been floundering recently.”
Which is more inhuman is it the anti-gay law in nigeria or the practice of an unclean, unscriptural, uncultural and unreligeous act of homosexuality which is a disgrace to the true African background and culture? I take it that any African country practicing the act is a complete shame and disappoinment to mother Africa. I pray God have on such nation.
I’m going to go with Anti-Gay Nigerian Laws for 60, Victor.