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206th out of 807 books
—
659 voters
One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir
*A New York Times Notable Book*
*A New York Times Book Review Editors'Choice*
*A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year*
Binyavanga Wainaina tumbled through his middle-class Kenyan childhood out of kilter with the world around him. This world came to him as a chaos of loud and colorful sounds: the hair dryers at his mother’s beauty parlor, black mamba bicycle bells, mecha...more
*A New York Times Book Review Editors'Choice*
*A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year*
Binyavanga Wainaina tumbled through his middle-class Kenyan childhood out of kilter with the world around him. This world came to him as a chaos of loud and colorful sounds: the hair dryers at his mother’s beauty parlor, black mamba bicycle bells, mecha...more
Hardcover, 272 pages
Published
July 19th 2011
by Graywolf Press
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Outstanding evocation of living in (primarily) East Africa. This was so much better than 'Looking for Transwonderland'. Moving, gripping, even though you know, because it is an autobiography, how it will turn out. A real insider's view. I'm sure I missed a lot and it took me a few pages to get into it but I heartily recommend it.
Having been familiar with Wainaina's writing in periodicals, I was looking forward to this book when it was published in 2011. I started reading it then and got a bit bogged down, thinking "okay, this is Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" transferred to Kenya." I set it aside and came back to it when I embarked on a trip to Tanzania (one country south of Kenya) in late December. Being able to juxtapose Binyavanga's writing with the actualities of East Africa was perfect. Kenya's different fr...more
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I like books written with an eccentric style. This would be one. Wainaina does a few things I really liked: give great information in the voice of a child narrator, then switch to that of an adult's, showcase character flaw, give poetic expose. So different. So appealing. I liked also hearing of his struggles as a writer in Kenya, his mention of being friends with Chimamanda Adichie when she was trying to get published, his experience in applying for the Caine prize, etc.
I assume that some of t...more
I assume that some of t...more
2 likes · like · see review
First, a complaint about the recording of the audiobook version. The narrator does a fine job of rendering the accents of different people. But throughout the recording, the narrator spoke so quietly that even with the volume cranked way up on my player, I often felt like I could barely hear him. Combine his low speech level with his African-accented reading and I found it really hard to listen to this. I wish I'd read the book instead.
That said, I really enjoyed the book. The writing felt alive...more
That said, I really enjoyed the book. The writing felt alive...more
1 like · like · see review
Wainaina paints pictures with words, whose choice is naturally heavily influenced by his culture. And what a marvelous mixture of cultures he represents. I think this is the first memoir I've read by an African, and there are so many ways of being African. Millions of ways, if you consider how each language and cultural identity multiplies itself in specific individuals. And Wainaina is a good observer and reporter of culture and even family tradition. If you look at it, Wainaina's life is relat...more
It took me a while to get into this book. For the first seventy-five pages, I just could not make myself care about Wainaina's life. Fortunately, my interest in the book improved the further I read. Wainaina's young adult years provide the forefront for most of his memoir, with the movements and events in Africa during the 1970s and '80s being a fascinating backdrop. The author provides readers with a younger voice's view of the post-colonial continent and all of its competing elements: pop cult...more
Binyavanga is a boy who seems a bit out of step with his family's ordered, prosperous life in Nakuru, Kenya. He observes the world in vivid snatches and his memoir is written in a similar way. It is a bit hard to dive into, but I found it very vivid and engaging once I got a grip on what he is doing. Kenya is a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic country in which most people's views of Africa and the world come mediated through community myths and ideas about the "other." The author does an excellent jo...more
Wow. Wow. And wow. From the cover and promotional blurb, I didn't expect to be really impressed with "One Day I Will Write About This Place." I was so wrong.
First, there's the story. Wainaina tells the story of his growing up in Kenya and reaching his dream of becoming a writer. What he includes of the turbulence of the times in Africa (from the 1970's to the present) is a reflection of his own uncertainty and feelings of not belonging. As a youngster Wainaina feels safer and more comfortable "f...more
First, there's the story. Wainaina tells the story of his growing up in Kenya and reaching his dream of becoming a writer. What he includes of the turbulence of the times in Africa (from the 1970's to the present) is a reflection of his own uncertainty and feelings of not belonging. As a youngster Wainaina feels safer and more comfortable "f...more
May 17, 2012
Linda
is currently reading it
Based on the first three or four chapters I would give the following advice: if you like performance art, this book may make sense to you. I don't want to condemn it or pass a good/bad judgment, I'm just saying at this point I don't get it. You get a smattering of young teen musings on things like words and sounds but nothing that convinces you those thoughts are interesting or purposeful. (which is why i make the connection to modern art, it doesn't have a purpose it just provokes a response) M...more
I am very glad that I read this book during and after my visit to Kenya. While I found the writing disjointed and sometimes hard to follow, I recognize the author's intent to convey the many-cultured, complicated nature of his home country as well as that of several other African nations. It was the kind of writing that made me expect a horrifically graphic account of a first sexual encounter, but such never materialized, specifically. The whole of the book, rather, was completely visceral and s...more
Nov 21, 2011
Bookreaderljh
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
books-read-in-2011
The author is a very good wordssmith. Obviously from his memoir reading, writing and words are the most important things to him. But sometimes the focus on the words made it difficult to focus on the story. His memoir is made up of vignettes from his life and though family plays a central part - there were often only glimpses of those around him and I would have liked more depth. Also - it was obvious that my knowledge of Kenya/Uganda politics is sorely lacking so I had additional difficulty fol...more
A masterpiece. As a fellow Kenyan I can relate to every detail in Wainaina's story. At times I wondered how non-Kenyan readers would appreciate his humour or witty comments that seemed so personal, so warm and so....Kenyan. I smiled, laughed and even had my eyes well up through the story, because I grew up around the same time as Wainaina, and my childhood has more or less the same images (the trauma of the Moi years, will we ever recover?)The prose was exquisite, the imagery sublime. His story...more
This is a really interesting book in which no sentence leaves the reader without some sort of sensory experience. Each thought contains a smell or sight or some varied way to relate what the author is trying to convey. His writing style is like none I've ever experienced...a cross between a child, a savant and a box of more than 64 crayons! For the author life is chaos and that comes through in the storytelling. It's his story of growing up in Kenya and feeling his life spring up around him. Som...more
What Binyavanga has done is taken "Discovering Home" (Discovering Home) and added a back-story and follow-on material. The unique thing about this book and one of the main reasons to read it is the authors perspective on other African countries (and Kenya itself) - the style is that of a travel novel, but with a personal story.
I found the first 25% of the book where he talks about his childhood unreadable and almost did not go on. The problem is in the detail and there is far too much of it (of...more
I found the first 25% of the book where he talks about his childhood unreadable and almost did not go on. The problem is in the detail and there is far too much of it (of...more
Book of the Week
Prize-winning author Binyavanga Wainaina's impressionistic memoir of growing up in modern day Kenya amongst a cacophony of sounds, black mamba bicycle bells, the hairdryers at his mother's beauty parlour, the languages of dozens of tribes and the infectious laughter of his sister Ciru. But over it all hangs the dread of what is happening in his mother's homeland, to her family and friends, under the dictatorship of Idi Amin.
Read by Freddy Macha. Abridged by Jane Marshall
Produce...more
Wainaina's style carries this series of vignettes, which traces his development as an author. At its best, the chapters are essays on the manner in which language shapes our perceptions and relations to others, something particularly true in Kenya, where many languages and cultures are in constant use. At its worst, they are travelogues with frequent allusions to popular culture and politics which I didn't follow. The book read as if it was put together from pieces written over a long period of...more
Elizabeth Pusack (Intern, Tin House Magazine): One Day I Will Write about This Place: A Memoir. One Day, which takes place in Kenya, South Africa and the U.S. at intervals, is one of the most nuanced portraits of “Africa” I’ve read. Wainaina carries readers all the way into 2010–where there are the corrupt elections we are accustomed to, but where Tupac T-Shirts, Obama-mania and Harry Potter also reign! As a reader of a lot of now decades-old post-colonial literature, the timeliness of this book...more
Possibly the best memoir I've read thus far, thoroughly sensual and crackling, almost painfully so; his perceptions of the world around him sizzle and sparkle like meat on a spit, but the narrator and his inner mechanisms remain the center of gravity here and is never overtaken by all the external combustibles popping around him. His use of language is almost like an installation of mirror shards, simultaneously tinkling as the reader moves past various life events and every once in a while scra...more
My thoughts:
• At first it took me a while to get into the flow of the book but for me this book was a series of vignettes/thoughts – some very brief and some a little longer. There were times when I was fully engaged and others that I was not quite sure what was going on.
• For the book is divided into the three stages of the author’s life – coming-of-age (childhood into adolescence as become more aware of the influences outside of family) – college years/young adult – adulthood and each part had...more
• At first it took me a while to get into the flow of the book but for me this book was a series of vignettes/thoughts – some very brief and some a little longer. There were times when I was fully engaged and others that I was not quite sure what was going on.
• For the book is divided into the three stages of the author’s life – coming-of-age (childhood into adolescence as become more aware of the influences outside of family) – college years/young adult – adulthood and each part had...more
The only thing that is important for you take out of this review is that you should read this book if:
1) You like autobiographies
2) You are interested in Kenya OR
3) You like books that are so well-written and so emotionally stirring that you will likely find yourself on the brink of tears.
If for some reason you haven't already ordered this book (I can only assume that you exclusively read Laurel K. Hamilton and her ilk, you sad human, you) I will expound on my review:
This book, by Binyavanga Wai...more
1) You like autobiographies
2) You are interested in Kenya OR
3) You like books that are so well-written and so emotionally stirring that you will likely find yourself on the brink of tears.
If for some reason you haven't already ordered this book (I can only assume that you exclusively read Laurel K. Hamilton and her ilk, you sad human, you) I will expound on my review:
This book, by Binyavanga Wai...more
1 like · like · see review
Aug 21, 2011
Rachel
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Anyone interested in contemporary Africa
I wish I could give this book 3 1/2 stars. I really liked most of it, but the childhood portions with Wainaina going on about the sun splintering into thousands of suns that breathe and dim and cool... It just seemed like he was trying too hard.
The success of this book, for me, was the author's unique take on what it is to be a Kenyan, an African, a tourist in his own country many times. How to navigate in a country with so many languages and traditions. How the tribalism creeps into politics a...more
The success of this book, for me, was the author's unique take on what it is to be a Kenyan, an African, a tourist in his own country many times. How to navigate in a country with so many languages and traditions. How the tribalism creeps into politics a...more
1 like · like · see review
Read this mostly while traveling Kenya recently (a book by a Kenyan writer) and it was marvelous. Always much more vivid when an author describes something and I could immediately visualize what exactly he was referring to by simply looking around. This memoir seemed to me Wainaina's version of "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man", and the comparison is apt and justified. Witty wordplay, much on family and local politics and how it effects a writer, wide-ranging, surprising. Will be following...more
I won this book through a Goodreads First Reads contest and I'm super excited to read it! Memoirs are one of my favorite genres...
...well, now that I've read it I'm slightly unsure about how I feel about it. This is certainly a well-written book. Wainaina does a beautiful job of bringing his surroundings to life. His writing is full of poetic prose that makes the reader feel like they are standing beside him on his journey. On the other hand, I don't feel like I got to know the characters very w...more
...well, now that I've read it I'm slightly unsure about how I feel about it. This is certainly a well-written book. Wainaina does a beautiful job of bringing his surroundings to life. His writing is full of poetic prose that makes the reader feel like they are standing beside him on his journey. On the other hand, I don't feel like I got to know the characters very w...more
Really a 3 star and 5 star book--vibrant and illuminating, it particularly coalesces in the latter half. A little fragmented in the beginning, sometimes specific and sometimes too general. I wanted more from the book, but at the same time enjoyed the uniqueness of Wainaina's voice and would look forward to what he writes next. A book about becoming a writer, as much or more so than it is about a place--though history and politics are tied up in the story as well.
Almost at the book's end Binyavanga writes about nyatiti: "it is a literary form, and the song, the tune of the song, does not follow a separate and parallel musical scale; it too is a slave to the story, its peaks and troughs, its moments of wisdom, its bad behavior. And people dance, moving enough around the music to inhabit the story." I think this constitutes an explanation of his memoir's form. What a fractured, disjointed mess of a story. He started his story as a boy in Kenya. He took us...more
Each chapter unzips a world at once magical and ordered, resplendent with both beauty and nightmare. Each word releases a liquid glimmer of sight, sound, smell, and touch. Binyavanga writes with a tender vulnerability, a raw honesty that takes the reader by the throat and pulls her into the room. He also writes with a wicked, wry, and winking humor that allows at least a sucked-in breath between the blows of life in this intensely alive journey.
I was going to pass this galley along to my good fr...more
I was going to pass this galley along to my good fr...more
Feb 06, 2013
William Hayes
added it
"Mrs. Gichiri calls me in to her office one day. She is my English teacher. Mrs. Gichiri. She is worried that my compositions are too wild. She says I should concentrate, keep them simple. She is sure I will do well. Like your sister, she says, beaming for the first time I can remember."
Imagine: a wildebeest taming himself! Just as well that it never happened.
Imagine: a wildebeest taming himself! Just as well that it never happened.
The book started slow and began to pick up speed about a third of the way through. It is reminiscent of Caryl Phillips "The Atlantic Sound" as the author relays his experiences while traveling to various countries on the African continent, while also noting the influence western blacks have on continent.
Politically, the book speaks to the challenges former socialist influenced governments like Kenya face after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This aspect alone makes the book worth the read.
Politically, the book speaks to the challenges former socialist influenced governments like Kenya face after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This aspect alone makes the book worth the read.
I don't know if it was my ARC version that needed more polishing or what, but I found it incredibly hard to get into this book. The author writes in the vernacular of his childhood, which in some books I've read helps you get into the story but in this book, at least for me, served to detract from the story. The book is more like a diary than a "story" but for whatever reason, it was incredibly difficult for me to feel invested in the author's life growing up. What I did like about it were the p...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great African Reads: February: Biography/Memoir | "One Day I Will Write about this Place" | 16 | 34 | Mar 09, 2013 06:29am | |
| Great African Reads: Kwani? | 15 | 35 | Aug 13, 2012 06:45pm |
Binyavanga Wainaina is a short story writer, essayist, and journalist.
He is the founding editor of Kwani?, a leading African literary magazine based in Kenya, and he directs the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.
He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, and has written for many journals, including Vanity Fair, National Geographic, One Story, Tin House, Vir...more
More about Binyavanga Wainaina...
He is the founding editor of Kwani?, a leading African literary magazine based in Kenya, and he directs the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.
He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, and has written for many journals, including Vanity Fair, National Geographic, One Story, Tin House, Vir...more
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“International correspondents with their long dictaphones, and dirty jeans, and five hundred words before whiskey, are slouched over the red velvet chairs, in the VIP section in the front, looking for the Story: the Most Macheteing Deathest, Most Treasury Corruptest, Most Entrail-Eating Civil Warest, Most Crocodile-Grinning Dictatorest, MOst Heart-Wrenching and Genociding Pulitzerest, Most Black Big-Eyed Oxfam Child Starvingest, Most Wild African Savages Having AIDS-Ridden Sexest with Genetically Mutilatedest Girls...The Most Authentic Real Black Africanest story they can find...”
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4 people liked it
“It is an aspect of Kenya I am always acutely aware of - and crave, because I don't have it all. My third language, Gikuyu, is nearly non-existent; I can't speak it. It is a phantom limb...”
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1 person liked it
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