There Are No Literary Structures in Kenya

But what does this really mean?

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

“In the West, one is able to observe how things work, how cultural units work, how cultural units ought to work, how the system make them work. In the Nairobi/Kenyan/African cultural scene, one gains the knowledge that these systems do not exist, that the literary unit can never settle, because there is no optimum environment in which to settle. We are like the Cushitic pastoralists in the deserts of Northern Kenya who move with their cattle across the terrain, in search for pasture and water, a continuous walk that never ends, never stops. Don’t stop, don’t settle. The mutation goes on all year long, year after year.”

I have heard it since I entered the literary scene, that the structures that can support a career in the literary arts do not exist here. And so our best writers look to the US and the UK for a shot at the kind of success they desire.

At first, of course, I took it as it was said because those people knew more than me. Then as I participated in the Nairobi literary scene I eventually saw that I did not know what “literary structures” meant — because I was going to literary events and seeing people doing literary things, so were those not the structures?

Then some more time passed and I ended up at some understanding of the literary structures and their alleged absence, and I found that I still could not take that assertion as complete truth. Because the testimony of those in the UK and the US, where the literary structures were said to exist, said that those structures only looked like they were working for regular folk, but they didn’t, really. And even there, writers and editors and small publishers and independent bookshops felt exploited, felt discouraged, felt trapped, felt locked out, felt disillusioned. Even there, literary careers were hard going.

But it remained a valid point of discourse that what we had was not enough, so I became interested in the things that counted as structures, what they were meant to do, and what we had and didn’t have.

Here’s what I came up with: a presumably non-exhaustive list of things that count as literary structures, where literary structures, as I define them, are spaces and systems in which writers can connect with one another and with their audiences, distribute their work, earn from their work, and find opportunities to grow as artists.

Publishing houses. Literary magazines. Newspapers and commercial magazines. Printers. Bookshops. Writing fellowships and residencies. Grants. Literature prizes. Literary festivals and book fairs. Smaller literary events like readings and launches. Libraries. Book clubs. Writing workshops. Literature degrees in universities. Literary criticism. Literary communities and content creation on online platforms. Book reviewers. Literature curricula for the primary and secondary school levels. Literary collectives. Directories of publishing professionals like editors, proofreaders, typesetters, and cover designers.

So when someone says there are no literary structures in Kenya, do they mean that these things do not exist?

Well, usually, no. They mean that the literary structures we do have are not yet strong enough to propel many writers to national and international acclaim or offer the kind of financial rewards available in more robust publishing ecosystems. And that is true. Our infrastructure is still developing. It serves the markets that are here, and those markets are still small, and this is understandably frustrating for writers longing for more readers, more widely read readers, wealthier readers, and a larger literary culture able to sustain bigger ambitions.

There is nothing wrong with seeking opportunities in larger literary ecosystems or wanting access to bigger markets. Most people, in one way or another, pursue opportunities beyond their local economies. But it helps to describe the situation clearly and honestly: the structures are there; some writers have just outgrown them. They may not be robust enough to support all writers’ ambitions, and that’s okay, because they are supporting some writers’ ambitions.

As one writer seeks wider opportunity abroad because that is where they are on their path, many more are writing tiny stories on WhatsApp and Instagram. They are attending workshops and festivals. They are submitting to literary magazines. They are graduating with degrees in Literature. They are sharing their storytelling through TikTok skits, short films, podcasts, newsletters, blogs, and YouTube channels. They are joining book clubs. They are getting library memberships. They are organising hangouts where they read and critique one another’s work. As they always have.

I find that constantly framing the situation only in terms of what is lacking can make it harder to see what already exists, what is being built, and how it serves its purpose. The ecosystem we have may not yet be mature enough to carry every ambition, but it is alive. And like everything else, it grows as we grow.

And important to consider is how it grows, how we imagine a thriving literary ecosystem without modelling it on what worked for the West in a century we already left behind. They built out their infrastructure in a very different time; we must go beyond what worked for them then and find out what works here now.

Part of that is acknowledging that the book is no longer the primary means through which most people experience storytelling and learning. So we would need to expand how we conceptualise literature itself and how it moves through our society today — not how we idealised it in a by-gone era. A paper I’ve read recently suggests that it is time for us to go beyond the book when thinking about literary culture in African countries, particularly now that so much literary production and consumption happens online, in spaces that the structures we previously aspired to cannot reach.

When we stop thinking of literary structures as only those centring and supporting the print book as a commodity, how does our judgement of our literary structures change?

One of the biggest challenges we face with our literary structures is their ephemerality. Our literary spaces are usually created and curated by young people who look around, do not find what would serve their needs, and then decide to make it and build a community around it. We celebrate it each time. But the thing about these spaces is that their blooming is made possible through the only resources young people usually have — their vitality and their time. Which means that they often fade as the young people who start them grow into greater life responsibilities. You realise you cannot raise a family on what literary work can give you, and so you move on to opportunities that can give you more. By which time, the next generation is about ready to set up their own spaces.

“…in a few years, a new group of kids will come up and decide that the lit scene in Kenya does not work, and gatekeepers be gatekeeping and that we need new names, and they will start something new. That was us in 2016.”

In this way, these structures are not made to last. But this is not necessarily a bad thing because that ephemerality gives agency to youth and allows the freedom to create a new thing. It ensures responsiveness to the times and to the needs of those who make them. It keeps the cost of entry low and widens the space for participation, which enriches the literary project. It makes it possible for many kinds of people to come together in many kinds of ways to create many kinds of literature. That they do not last does not mean they are not successful literary structures.

However, what we lose when all we have is the ephemeral is institutions that endure, that can preserve knowledge and pool resources for long-term planning. Institutions require investment, which is where the state and the wealthy fail us.

But beyond our frustration with wealth that refuses to fund prizes, grants, libraries, residencies, and free creative spaces where young writers can gather to connect and create — because we as a city are in desperate, dire need of more malls and petrol stations — what can we still build and sustain with what we already have? Even as skilled Kenyan writers look abroad for access to bigger markets, is it possible to still do good work within the literary ecosystem we do have? Is it possible to participate more deeply in the communities that exist, rather than only mourning what is absent? To keep leaning on friendship, collaboration, and mutual support to create more space for creative work? To share our knowledge more generously? To nurture the readership that already exists instead of dismissing it for being small? To imagine a thriving literary culture that is local and accessible rather than dependent on prestige?

And this matters because the way to make a literary ecosystem that can support our bigger dreams is to invite more people into the world of literature, to nurture the reading public. We have to grow our readership. And that means making room for the kinds of books that wider audiences will enjoy reading. Investing more seriously in commercial literature. Producing and marketing more stories that a regular Kenyan will fly through in a couple of hours on a Saturday night, not just the ones that ask readers to sit with the distressing.

A literary culture cannot thrive only on work that requires intellectual striving and emotional aftercare. It also grows through pleasure, accessibility, and widespread connection. In addition to the Great African Novel, we need the books that we read just because they are fun, because they carry us along, because they make long commutes shorter. We need more well-written local genre fiction. More romance, thrillers, mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, horror, and humour that comes out of our everyday lives. We need to invite our own into stories that meet them where they are, that show them a good time, that allow them to view reading as part of ordinary life rather than something that feels distant, academic, or for the elite.

Call for Submissions: Love Stories by Kenyan Writers

Our literary infrastructure is lacking in many ways. But I find that sometimes, what we perceive as lack is not really. The large Western publishing industries people often look towards have had far more time, money, and institutional backing to develop. They also carry the problems that come with large-scale, profit-driven systems: exclusion, inequality, and concentration of power. It feels contradictory to critique those systems while simultaneously longing to replicate them exactly.

But we have the benefit of a ship small enough to course correct. We can value who we are and where we are, take seriously what already exists, and imagine growth that does not crush underfoot. We can experiment. We can remain human-sized. We can appreciate that a small literary ecosystem is not the worst thing that could happen to us.

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Related interesting things:

• An essay I return to often, and from which I pulled the quotes in this post: The Kenyan Literary Hustle.

• Also: On the African Literary Hustle.

• The paper I mention: Hot Reads, Pirate Copies, and the Unsustainability of the Book in Africa’s Literary Future.