Gukira

• Richard Onyango’s Bodies

  Posted: August 31, 2011, 11:16 pm by keguro

  Drossie was so unique and familiar, and she was my first lady. Maybe she influenced me to see the big ladies first before the other ones. So when I see a big lady, it is much easier for me to see her than any other lady, and again, I discovered that most men don’t like [...]

• Welcome Mourning

  Posted: August 30, 2011, 10:27 pm by keguro

  In a ghoulish video somewhere, I hold a dead man’s photograph and precede a coffin processional, a scene I remember too well from a long-ago production of Oliver Twist. The suit is navy blue—a color I associate with funerals and detest. It’s easier, now, to let Oliver Twist color my imagination of that day, to [...]

• Masturbation is Great!

  Posted: August 29, 2011, 3:59 pm by keguro

  Go masturbate! Seriously! I have never believed that masturbation was a layover on the way to secure (or consistent) partnership or, as some would have it, an adolescent habit on the way to adulthood. Earlier in my sex-career, I discovered that finding sex was hard work. First, the finding, then the having, then the after-having. [...]

• Richard Onyango’s Memory Work

  Posted: August 28, 2011, 5:05 pm by keguro

  I came to Richard Onyango later than I should have. Which is to say, I came to know about him later than I should have, even though I recognized his work and style, especially his Drosie portraits. In (or around) 2008, Kwani? published The Life and Times of Richard Onyango, a narrative of his life [...]

• Imagining Futures

  Posted: August 27, 2011, 9:05 am by keguro

  A recent article in the Daily Nation begins, Imagine you are invited to address an international gathering of “young leaders” — those brilliant, world-travelled, multi-lingual twenty-somethings who graduate from top schools with top honors and — having walked away from six-figure salaries — work for almost nothing in NGOs. One of these “young leaders” is [...]

• Seeing, Staring, Looking

  Posted: August 25, 2011, 10:57 am by keguro

  [Seeing] is a product of battle-tested strategies and hard-won epistemologies honed into tools for carving out a space and habitation of survival.—Darieck Scott, Extravagant Abjection Aaron Bady’s recent essay on Tarzan in American Literature (AL, open access, it’s a good thing) thinks through the fantasy-reality of Tarzan’s flight as Tarzan moves from Burroughs’s universe to [...]

• Sudsy

  Posted: August 24, 2011, 6:16 pm by keguro

  [T]he family identity produced on American television is much more likely to include your dog than your homosexual brother or sister.—Leo Bersani, “Is the Rectum a Grave?” Contemporary gay men must be delivered from unseemly, uncivilized sexual practices carried out in the great cities of Europe and America just as savage, if somewhat childlike, Africans [...]

• Those Terrible Poor People

  Posted: August 22, 2011, 12:09 pm by keguro

  The need to play victim and blame others is found across Kenyan society. The poor are some of the worst human rights offenders. Many believe they are owed by society.–Wamuyu Gatheru, Governance Consultant Kenya has too many consultants.

• Frottage (One)

  Posted: August 22, 2011, 2:44 am by keguro

  A friend tells me that books (critical, scholarly) should have some kind of personal narrative, a kind of “this is how I came to this project and this is why it matters to me.” This is an interesting convention. We spend multiple years working on books, and for the untenured, the tenure-track, the hoping-to-be-tenure-track, and [...]

• A Most Perfect Introduction

  Posted: August 21, 2011, 12:21 pm by keguro

  It seems that we are on the verge of something. Although the snows of winter still linger, the light of the queer morning seems surprisingly strong. The thrust and counter-thrust over the matter of so-called gay respectability occur with such shocking regularity that colleagues, friends, and family alike continually remind us that though we remain [...]

• Honey, You’re a Nag

  Posted: August 21, 2011, 10:20 am by keguro

  The third “most popular” article in the Daily Nation as of 8 am today is “Honey, You’re a Nag.” It is the latest in the Nation’s ongoing and relentless campaign to trivialize women’s lives and concerns. Though it focuses on the “private” and the “intimate,” ostensibly the “domestic,” and quotes are necessary here because Kenya [...]

• On the Trivial

  Posted: August 16, 2011, 4:55 pm by keguro

  I am always squinting, a habit learned from before I wore glasses that has carried over, watered by excessively sunny days and a distaste for sunglasses. Squinting does not make objects come into focus, at least not in my case. Instead, I have found it a useful way to pay attention to the everyday life [...]

• Reading Kenyan Marriage

  Posted: August 10, 2011, 3:04 am by keguro

  I have been trying to think about the ongoing work of marriage and marriage legislation in Kenya as a way to approach a range of attachments (and how they are narrated) within Kenya’s colonial modernity. In the more ambitious form of this undertaking, I am interested in the various marriage laws enacted prior to 1963—the [...]

• The Curious Life of Chain Letters

  Posted: August 9, 2011, 11:48 am by keguro

  I received (in error) a letter that fascinates me. Its trajectory is worth remarking. In between every few sentences, picture a slightly creepy, ripped-from-hallmark picture of a little white girl, present in the original version—I choose not to reproduce those images here. The creepiness will become apparent. I claim responsibility for all parenthetical remarks. Okay, [...]

• On Mercy Keino

  Posted: August 9, 2011, 7:50 am by keguro

  In July 2011, Kenyan newspapers reported that Mercy Keino, a University of Nairobi student, had been found dead on Waiyaki Way, a busy Kenyan highway. Mercy had last been seen at a party in an affluent neighborhood adjacent to the highway. As I start to write this, I realize that of the various narratives circulating [...]

• “Put Up a Good Photograph”

  Posted: August 2, 2011, 10:31 pm by keguro

  In the trash romance novels I devour, young women looking to be married often display some artistic accomplishment, or try to. They might play the piano earnestly, with more good intent than artistry; paint watercolors in which the objects depicted crave not to be represented; or sing nice songs in so-so voices. These offerings are [...]

• Alas! You Have Mail

  Posted: August 2, 2011, 9:32 am by keguro

  I have grown very fond of the God-Devil conceit that opens the Book of Job: God: Devil, where have you been? Devil: Hanging out, checking out stuff. There’s something very convivial about it. And I like conviviality. Earlier this AM, I decided to browse around stuff, following the Devil’s example, and discovered Kenya’s leading online [...]

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes