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2014\/10\/11<\/p>\n
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Drama Alert! <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n | Shine Your Fucking Eyes <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n | Read Binyavanga\u2019s <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Dear Caine Prize Rant\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Image via Nairobi Wire<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n I woke up this morning, dutifully writing a blogpost about the Nobel Prize when I received a message from a friend about\u00a0some major drama taking place on Wainaina Binyavanga\u2019s twitter feed. I hurried off to Twitter and saw\u00a0a string of angry tweets criticizing\u00a0The Caine Prize for African literature<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Here is how I understand his concerns:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n He thinks that in the African\u2014especially Nigerian\u2014literary scene, we accord the Caine Prize for African literature far too much significance than it deserves.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n How can this foreign literary institution purport to define all that is best and awesome in contemporary African fiction?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDear Caine Prize,\u201d he says, \u201cu made nothing, produced nothing, distributed nothing. U give a Prize of cash money and publicity. That is it.\u201d Why then do we hold this prize up to some undeserved pedestal and, in the process, neglect our homegrown literary institutions such as Farafina Workshop, Kwani, and so on?\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n He even goes as far as calling out specific individuals like Lizzie Attree, one of the organizers of Caine Prize, asking her to respond to his remarks and the Nigerian writer, Elnathan John, challenging him to a debate.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0To those who accuse him of biting the hand that fed him\u2014Binyavanga received the Caine Prize in 2002\u2014his answer is: so what!\u00a0Winning the Caine Prize does not prevent him from expressing honest criticism. Besides,\u00a0Caine Prize is not entirely responsible for his success as a writer. It\u2019s taken him 12 years of hard work to get to where he is.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Here is how it started:\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Binyavanga first aired his quarrel with the Caine Prize a few weeks ago during a\u00a0This is Africa<\/strong>\u00a0interview with Nigerian journalist,\u00a0Chiagozie Nwonwu<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI give the Caine Prize its due credit but it just isn\u2019t our institution. All these young people who are ending up in that place were built up by many people\u2019s work.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n He also says: \u201cWhat is\u00a0 happening is you people are allowing the Caine Prize to receive funding and build itself as a brand and make money and people\u2019s career there in London while the vast majority of [African] institutions are vastly underfunded and vastly\u00a0ungrown,\u00a0and they are the ones who create the ground that is building these new writers.\u201d<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n He also criticized what he saw as a Nigerian literary \u201caddiction\u201d to Caine Prize to the neglect of local literary platforms like\u00a0<\/em>Farafina<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Saraba<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n In these tweets, however, Binyavanga seems to have turned up the heat a notch. His tone is a bit more aggressive and condescending. So now I\u2019m wondering. Is there something he is not telling us about his concerns about Caine Prize?\u00a0Is there<\/em>\u00a0something else eating him? Has Caine Prize done\u00a0this really bad thing that he\u2019s not wanting to share?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m choosing to stay out of the drama for now and maintain an objective distance. Read the tweets below. And let me know what you think.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ++++++++++++++++++++++++<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/binyavanga.jpg\")
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