From these digital literary graveyards will rise the next Ngugi

When I first heard about a new literary outfit calling itself Enkare a couple of months ago, the first thing I had to ask was what the name meant. One of the founders, Troy Onyango, explained to me that it came from the Maasai phrase enkare nairobi (cool waters), which denoted the place that became the city which I live. They used the first part of the name as their project title as the capital city of Kenya used the second part as its official name.

These young men then went ahead to surprise me and many others as one of their first stories published, Amsterdam, happened to have been written by Junot Diaz. Junot Diaz, for the few reading this pages who might not know, is one of the most respected writers in the US today. The New York Times bestseller has won many accolades. The most recognizable to Kenyans would be the Pulitzer Prize and the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship also won by Nigerian Chimamanda Adichie and Ethiopian Mengistu Dinaw.

Since then they have featured the work of writers like Nigeria/Ghana’s Taiye Selasi, Zimbabwe’s Tendai Huchu and Ethiopia’s award winning writer Maaza Mengiste.

So you can imagine my shock when I picked up the Saturday Nation and read an article which referenced this amazing project, which is still in its infancy, in the same breath as “literary graveyards.” The piece by Gloria Mwaniga inferred that many projects have come and gone, with few going beyond the fifth year.

ALTERANTIVE PUBLISHERS

Therefore the people running this new project should possibly “save their enthusiasm for later because as things are, there seems to be absolutely no longevity in the mushrooming E-journals, literary journals and magazines, websites and blogs.” Apart from Enkare, the writer referenced other projects that had gone on to the literary graveyard like Wamathai’s literary blog, Oduor Jagero’s KUT and the Kikwetu Journal. 

When I finished reading this article, I have to confess, I saw red. This kind of reaction was similar to the attacks we witnessed when a brand new literary journal, Kwani?, was launched in Kenya in 2003. This journal was a breath of fresh air for the Kenyan creative writing community, which had stagnated as publishers had abandoned it as they sought the educational book dividend. Writers seeking “official channels” to showcase their work then, and even now, had to wait for long periods that went into years before their work was seen by the public. That is if they were lucky. 

The attacks on that journal and the people behind it were sad as the young revolutionaries were trying to offer an alternative to the world that we had been forced to endure for a very long time. With this kind of treatment, it’s hardly surprising that it would be a while before anyone would be foolhardy enough to try and do any new literary projects. The idea that new ideas were to be bashed before they could get to their proper level by authority figures, the literary police, became normalised.

Nothing could be further than the truth. After all, what are the options for any young creative writer who wants to showcase their work to readers today? As mentioned earlier, the Kenyan publishing industry hasn’t covered itself in glory where this person is concerned, so they are forced to look for alternatives. The easiest option of course would be to set up a blog or start posting their ramblings on their Facebook page. At this point, this writer is still in the “half baked” stage that Mwaniga referred to in her article.

The next step would be to come together with like-minded people to work on their stories with peer reviewing. Such a coming together allows writers to hone their craft as well as getting feedback from fellow writers as well as readers. That is how initiatives like Jalada, Story Zetu, Amka and the new kid on the block, Enkare, came to being. Another very important initiative is the Amka intiative where writers meet monthly and discuss their work. The problem with the above is that these initiatives are all that we have going in a country of fourty two million.

They say that only one in 10 business make it through their first year, and the odds are even starker as the years roll on. With this in mind, it is obvious that the creative writing business has too few failures thus even less successes to ensure that its interests are met.

For the writers in the length and breadth of the nation of Kenya to be tapped in all of their county homes, we need hundreds of creative writing projects like these started across the country. Not less. Most will fail with the usual attrition rates, but those involved in them will learn and improve their craft and we will get the next generation of writers and poets. We need more of these projects to come to the fore and bloom, and fail, as this is where Kenya’s next Ngugi is most likely to be found.

James Murua is the blogger behind leading African literary blog www.jamesmurua.com.