A Review of the First "Gay" Kenyan Book
"We're queer and we're here." That is the mantra that floated in my mind hours after the launch of Invisible: Stories From Kenya's Queer Community at Goethe Institut, in February 2014. The author, Kevin Mwachiro, and other gay rights activists at the launch promised the book will "show, rather than merely tell", what it means to be gay in Kenya.
They assured us that the book will show us that gay people are people too: they are our neighbors, our classmates, our colleagues, our relatives... fellow human beings simply trying to make it through life like the rest of us.
Some of the stories live up to the promise. "Turkanas Can't be Gay!" stands out in the pack for me. It is a raw and honest account of a Turkana man wading through questions about his own gender identity. He wrestles with feelings that he neither wanted nor could control -- his attraction to men. Other stories that "show" the gay experience include "Make Me Love Women", and "Boy Who Feels Like a Girl".
In these stories, we see that the queer people are human beings, deserving of the same rights as their straight neighbors. The stories show that homophobia is real and it hurts real people. The stories rouse us to the fact that there is a lot of confusion over how to address the LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Intersex) issues - a confusion shared by both the queer and the straight people confronting the issue. The stories show that is is indeed for the good of all to start talking to one another rather than at each other concerning this issue.
Most of the other stories, however, are either pseudo-essays or heavily editorialized stories with a clear agenda/goal in mind. For example, "A Mother's Fears for Her Lesbian Daughter" turns out to be a lesbian's speculation of what parents of gay children could be thinking and wondering and worrying about. The mother is never given a chance to voice her own thoughts.
I felt this was mis-representative. It would have been much more relevant (and more believable) to hear the actual thoughts of a parent of a gay person. But then again, that would be deviating from the script of a book specifically about stories BY the queer, and not by their relatives.
I also found the book's obsession with the sexual "acts" of the queer to be counterproductive to the author's overall objective. If homosexuality is bigger than merely sexual attraction, then why narrow the experiences down to just the sexual acts and the surrounding fore-play? There was too little, if any, mention of the bigger questions of identity in these stories. Having an attraction is one thing, acting on the attraction is a whole different matter. I submit that telling this difference is the crux of 99% of LGBTI debates.
The only time other socio-political aspects of being queer are mentioned, such as love and companionship and marriage and family and economics, apart from sex-acts, is in the preachy stories that are either told as poetry or pseudo-essays. To give the devil his due, I must point out that some stories do mention the challenges that queer people face in the workplace and schools.
I find it curious, though, that the accounts were mostly by queer people who were already LGBTI activists and not just your "normal" queer person. This weakens the impact of the book. If your aim is to show me that the queer person is my next door neighbor, then tell me the story of my next door neighbor. Using seasoned activists to make your point this only makes your objectives and motives more suspect.
Despite my (heavily biased) concerns, the author effectively drives home one truth: The queer feelings and tendencies (the orientation) are not purely sociological phenomena. "Queerness" is often a biological reality that needs to be approached and addressed as such. We should not be too narrow-minded and think of this as purely a "choice". Many queer people do not choose to be that way. What they are cannot simply be willed away. The stories (a few of them) effectively illustrate and unarguably confirm that many gay people are actually "born this way" and there is no disputing the fact.
As I put down the book, I couldn't help but wonder; why is there the assumption that the queer one is the open-minded one? Isn't it merely human (and convenient) to be open-minded only as long as our rights, views and preferences are included in that open-mindedness?
Even as we sit down to talk about homosexuality in Kenya and chart a way forward, let us beware of the reality that, often, what we mean by "thinking out of the box" is merely thinking inside a different box. Which box will you be thinking in?
~~~~
Ngare
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| Photo credit: ke.boell.org |
Some of the stories live up to the promise. "Turkanas Can't be Gay!" stands out in the pack for me. It is a raw and honest account of a Turkana man wading through questions about his own gender identity. He wrestles with feelings that he neither wanted nor could control -- his attraction to men. Other stories that "show" the gay experience include "Make Me Love Women", and "Boy Who Feels Like a Girl".
In these stories, we see that the queer people are human beings, deserving of the same rights as their straight neighbors. The stories show that homophobia is real and it hurts real people. The stories rouse us to the fact that there is a lot of confusion over how to address the LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Intersex) issues - a confusion shared by both the queer and the straight people confronting the issue. The stories show that is is indeed for the good of all to start talking to one another rather than at each other concerning this issue.
Most of the other stories, however, are either pseudo-essays or heavily editorialized stories with a clear agenda/goal in mind. For example, "A Mother's Fears for Her Lesbian Daughter" turns out to be a lesbian's speculation of what parents of gay children could be thinking and wondering and worrying about. The mother is never given a chance to voice her own thoughts.
I felt this was mis-representative. It would have been much more relevant (and more believable) to hear the actual thoughts of a parent of a gay person. But then again, that would be deviating from the script of a book specifically about stories BY the queer, and not by their relatives.
I also found the book's obsession with the sexual "acts" of the queer to be counterproductive to the author's overall objective. If homosexuality is bigger than merely sexual attraction, then why narrow the experiences down to just the sexual acts and the surrounding fore-play? There was too little, if any, mention of the bigger questions of identity in these stories. Having an attraction is one thing, acting on the attraction is a whole different matter. I submit that telling this difference is the crux of 99% of LGBTI debates.
The only time other socio-political aspects of being queer are mentioned, such as love and companionship and marriage and family and economics, apart from sex-acts, is in the preachy stories that are either told as poetry or pseudo-essays. To give the devil his due, I must point out that some stories do mention the challenges that queer people face in the workplace and schools.
I find it curious, though, that the accounts were mostly by queer people who were already LGBTI activists and not just your "normal" queer person. This weakens the impact of the book. If your aim is to show me that the queer person is my next door neighbor, then tell me the story of my next door neighbor. Using seasoned activists to make your point this only makes your objectives and motives more suspect.
Despite my (heavily biased) concerns, the author effectively drives home one truth: The queer feelings and tendencies (the orientation) are not purely sociological phenomena. "Queerness" is often a biological reality that needs to be approached and addressed as such. We should not be too narrow-minded and think of this as purely a "choice". Many queer people do not choose to be that way. What they are cannot simply be willed away. The stories (a few of them) effectively illustrate and unarguably confirm that many gay people are actually "born this way" and there is no disputing the fact.
As I put down the book, I couldn't help but wonder; why is there the assumption that the queer one is the open-minded one? Isn't it merely human (and convenient) to be open-minded only as long as our rights, views and preferences are included in that open-mindedness?
Even as we sit down to talk about homosexuality in Kenya and chart a way forward, let us beware of the reality that, often, what we mean by "thinking out of the box" is merely thinking inside a different box. Which box will you be thinking in?
~~~~
Ngare
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Hmmm! How come I never saw this review back in 2014? Well written. To think outside the box merely is to think inside another. Nice.
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