“How To Write About Africa - Collected Works” by Binyavanga Wainaina (2022)

One should be in tune with the historical context of the early 2000s and late 1990s to make the most out of the narratives penned by Binyavanga Wainaina. I don’t recall exactly when I came across his most famous essay “How To Write About Africa” (2005), but without any doubt it was during my time completing the MALS program at Lehman College (CUNY). That essay did a whole 360 to my intellectual life.

“How To Write About Africa” molds a provoking yet realistic train of thought that many Africans (and those of the diaspora, might I add) have had in relation to the stereotypical portrays of the continent’s cultures, geographical settings, and peoples. This essay, sometimes formatted in bullet-pointed paragraphs, was published on Granta magazine in 2005. After more than twenty years since its publication, many eyes have laid on these particular Wainaina’s pungent words. Whenever someone mentions Wainaina, my mind strictly pictures a sharp intellectual from whom I’m expecting both a satyrical tone and a profound sense of pride towards African identity. Too many have been the times that Africa gets to be misrepresented on the big screen, in the literary world, and in academia.

The author passed away, but his words are still very much lively.