When I think of delight, I think of giddy squealing and feet-kicking at 2 am when you’re just getting to the good part of a romance novel, when the two leads begin to realise they are fucked. God, I love it.
Like everyone else, I first read romance as a teenager. But I was a religious teenager, firmly embedded in the church, and though I read a couple of Mills & Boon books, most of the romance I consumed was within Christian novels by Karen Kingsbury and her ilk. I loved them because they showed good love within firm faith. It was sweet, it was tender, it was gradual. There were barely any kisses, only the promise of them, and certainly no sex scenes, not even the suggestion of fornication except when necessary to show what it looks like when you fall but then repentance softens your landing with grace. And where there was no repentance? Well, the absence of the acknowledgement of sin only happened to unimportant side characters. Main characters are never cautionary tales because then what does that say of grace, of hope, of the lick of hell’s flames on your heels?
What I enjoyed about those books was the romance, watching two be drawn to each other, almost against their will, by a force far greater than them. I did not know this then. I was a good Christian girl; I thought the appeal was the Jesus of it all.
When I was 17, a friend lent me a book whose title I cannot remember now. It revolved around the family of a pastor some place like Sweden, where the sun can shine at midnight. It was not contemporary, but I have no recollection of how far back in the past the story occurred. I do not remember the plot, not even whether there was any at all. I remember the pastor’s wife and her children. I remember each of them succumbing to romance. I remember tenderness and intimacy and the knowledge that love would always catch you. Then my class teacher, a kind woman who probably just wanted the best for us, confiscated it, saying that for as long as the book so much as mentioned a marriage, suggested romantic love as centred, then it was inappropriate for us. It did not matter that the book was severely Christian in its style and content.
One of our set books was The River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, the central story of which is the conflict Waiyaki faces because he falls in love with a local pastor’s daughter at a time when the traditionalists and those who adopted the white man’s religion were at each other’s throats. I loved The River Between, relished each scene where Nyambura and Waiyaki pined for each other. Not many would categorise it as a romance, but I consider it the first Kenyan love story I read. But this was a high school set book — our reading of this romance was state-sanctioned. And besides, look how Nyambura and Waiyaki ended up, for all their pining. Romance yes, but cautionary.
There is something here about how our society teaches romantic love, about how we regard it. It is a thing to be afraid of and then to become resigned to and then to scorn for all its foolishness. I was told books before boys because boys bring babies, and I listened (a teaching that my parents now regret to a degree because the aversion to babies does not seem to be going away with age as they had hoped). As every parent’s dream child, I lacked the capacity to experience romance for myself then, and so I kept it within the pages of my Christian novels, which I then learnt to keep at home lest they were confiscated. And then high school was over, and I could make my own decisions for the first time, and I eventually left the church, along with the novels set within it, and there was nothing left.
When, late bloomer that I am, I got acquainted with the sensation of heartbreak just before I turned 25, I relied on love songs to keep my heart soft. A little later, in the thick of burnout, as I was working three jobs, none of which paid much, and trooping through grad school, I experienced a reading slump so severe that I could only consume the unserious. I tried to return to the books I inhaled as a child, looking for that sense of easy adventure, of safety, and I did not find it. I remembered how it had felt to read romance, how easy and natural, how pure and shining with hope. So I looked for a romance novel.
If my brain were not so selective with what it chooses to hold on to, I would know exactly which book and which author I first read when I returned to romance. It turns out, though, that my memory prefers feeling over concrete information. But what matters is that at a time when my life felt stifled and stagnant, the romance genre felt like wide open blue skies.
Now, when life moves at the pace of a brisk, refreshing walk, I read a romance novel or two a week. A lot of the time, I do not remember the names of the characters (in my reading life as in my real life). But I remember the scenes, the story. I remember the feeling growing hot and white in my chest. I remember the overwhelm, the tears, the anxiety. I remember the arguments that rip through me as if they were my own. I remember the hope, the certainty, the knowing that love, always love.
I’ve heard it said that part of the delight of falling in love comes from a kind of regression into childhood. Cringe is a part of love. When you’re in it, it feels like there is no way to behave any differently, that you have no choice but to act so out of character. Where did all this feeling come from, and why is it so difficult to contain it within my body? But you look back at past loves and marvel at just how stupid it all was. Every sacrifice that didn’t feel like a sacrifice now bears the mark of senselessness. Every action that didn’t need thought, let alone reciprocation, now sounds like the folly of youth. But when you’re there, it is everything, colours everything, lifts you a bit off the ground and you are boundless, abundant, free.
Online, complaints abound about how unnecessary romance and erotica are to TV shows and movies and books. They are not necessary to the plot. They assume that everyone wants romantic love and sex in everything. Who are they shoehorning these plot lines in here for?
I would say that they are squeezing romance (or suggestions of romance) into everything for me, for those of us who love love. But that’s not true. I am not a fan of hard action or gore or suspense. I too am disinterested in two people making out as the world explodes to hell around them, but mostly because I am disinterested in the world exploding to hell. No, I go straight to the source for my romance, where the romance is not just necessary to the plot — it is the plot. For years now, I have been committed to the light, the frivolous, the unserious. I refuse to have my stories wrapped up in difficult things — I read nonfiction and watch documentaries for that. I come to my entertainment choices seeking the regardless, the despite, the notwithstanding. Relief. Joy. Hope. And even as I say this, it strikes me as only partially true because love and romance are very serious indeed.
When I rediscovered romance novels, I began with white authors. They are the easiest to find, in any genre. Then I looked for black authors, landed on black British and black American ones. I found Caribbean romance, South-East Asian romance, Latina American romance. All before I found African romance. Far before I found Kenyan romance.
Truthfully, I am still looking for the Kenyan love stories. I am sifting through our literary canon and finding nothing that centres the love story, nothing that says this is the most important thing. More and more it feels like to us, romantic love is a side plot at best. But how can that be when we’re all so caught up in pursuit of it, when so many of our memes are about finding love, losing it, and finding it again. It starts to feel like a dissonance: we want romantic love but believe we shouldn’t, we want to not want it. “Nairobi is for business, not love.” To train your eyes on romance is stupid.
And yet.
It has grown into a deep preoccupation for me. Where are the Kenyan love stories? And when I say love stories, I do not mean colonialism or post-colonialism or urban decay or the claws of violence tearing into everything… with a side of romance — this is what I am finding so far. I mean genuine, heart open, transcendent, this is the only thing that matters romance — the way it exists in our unencumbered dreams. I am looking for the cute, the hot, the earnest. I am looking to swoon, dammit.
When the stars align, I will ask for romance manuscripts. I want to publish Kenyan romance. Romance set in Turkana, in Homa Bay, in Kitale, in Garissa, in Pokot, in Kilifi, in Murang’a, in the villages where my parents grew up. Of course, of course, romance set in Nairobi — how much more than a big bedroom and a shamba la mawe can it be? I will read, I will delight, I will write to the authors and tell them they showed the face of love. I will share these stories with the world, say: Look. Look how unbearably saccharine this is. Look how soaring. Isn’t it great? Doesn’t it feel like every time you meet someone and realise, oh no, not again, you’re fucked. And how glorious.
When the stars align.
Right now, the stars are still finding their way. Every so often it will be 2 am and the world will be quiet and my kindle will glow dim. Tomorrow is a working day, and yet, this is more important, far more important, it feels like. I must watch them fall. I must feel the tension crackling between them. I must question what love is, why it must be so intractable. I must transpose myself onto the female protagonist, feel loved, powerful, desired, seen, accepted. I must. My eyelids droop but I can’t look away, until I must, love setting me gently into oblivion, freedom.
I resonate with this so deeply 💞 can't waitttt for authentic Kenyan love stories to become mainstream
I have really enjoyed this read! And I am eagerly waiting. I think for us it goes waaay deeper.. In how we were brought up.. as ladies, we were just told to focus on our books and more books and we were magically expected to get our prince charming before 25, you know? I, too, believe there are tonnes of Kenyan stories that we are yet to see.