Kenyan, Christian, Queer by Adriaan van Klinken

Author:Adriaan van Klinken [Klinken, Adriaan van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, LGBTQ+ Studies, General, Sociology of Religion, Religion, Christianity, Literature & the Arts, History, Africa, East, Black Studies (Global)
ISBN: 9780271085609
Google: MaC8DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penn State Press
Published: 2019-08-14T04:16:09+00:00

Africa

Concern about life for queer people in Kenya prompted some narrators to make positive comparisons with other African countries. Two neighboring countries, Uganda and Tanzania, are each mentioned once in SOOL—Tanzania as a place where transgender people are more common and accepted, and Uganda for having a large and vibrant gay community. The latter statement in particular may come as a surprise, given Uganda’s international reputation as possibly “the world’s worst place to be gay” owing to its infamous Anti-Homosexuality Act.52 Yet, as one narrator suggests, the Ugandan gay community is not only big and vibrant but also close-knit; its members are “meshed together” and “check on each other,” a positive state of affairs he finds missing in Kenya. Less surprising, perhaps, are several positive references to South Africa, the country widely seen as representing the continent’s “dream of love to come.”53 Because it was impossible to marry his partner in Kenya, one storyteller thought, “Maybe we could get married in South Africa and then come back here” (82). Whether because of the country’s legal provision for same-sex marriage or its constitutional protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, another narrator states bluntly that “South Africa is easy—they don’t have homophobia.” Yet he tempers this perception by adding that the so-called rainbow nation does “have issues with xenophobia and with racism” (90). Nevertheless, the fact that the two openly and high-profile Kenyan gay public figures discussed in previous chapters—Binyavanga Wainaina and George Barasa—have both relocated to South Africa reflects the strong association of this country with African queer freedom.

While the identification with Kenya is ambivalent, most of the explicit references in SOOL to Africa as a geocultural entity are negative. One narrator, having shared his experiences of abuse and harassment as a gay-identifying male sex worker, concludes by saying that he is “tired of Africa now” and dreams of being taken to Europe by a man willing to marry him (95). Others explain their decision to conceal their gay identity by arranging a heterosexual marriage as the natural result of living in Africa. “I’m in this Africa so I must marry,” one says simply (206); another, quoted above, explains, “in the future, I want to get married to a woman. This is Africa, I have to be realistic. . . . I have to start a family; it is what is expected of me” (231). One of SOOL’s female narrators explains this expectation with reference to the dominant cultural view, in which women are always attached to men: “African women are raised from childhood to belong to a man and to children. Nothing in between. We can’t belong to ourselves, and when we try, we’re told we’re being selfish. . . . Men are—apparently—the only ones who can give women legitimacy as human beings” (198). These statements reinforce the association of Africa with homophobia, heteronormativity, and patriarchy. The storytellers make little direct effort to reclaim Africa as a sociocultural space that could accommodate their queer lives. Whereas young

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