One Day I Will Write About This Place

Binyavanga Wainaina’s debut, One Day I Will Write About This Place, is a stream-of-consciousness memoir. The author is best known for his essay “How To Write About Africa,” which began as an email to Granta and ended up becoming their most-read piece ever published. Through this book, he explores his struggle to come to terms with his own identity and to find a sense of belonging in the world. Throughout the book, he describes always feeling different and apart from the people with whom he grew up. From a young age, he knew he wanted to be a writer, but this presented a conflict as well, as it was hardly regarded as a stable or realistic form of employment. Wainaina describes how he overcame his fear of failure to achieve his greatest dreams.

Having grown up in Africa, Wainaina features various regions within the book. His home country is Kenya, and his mother was born in Uganda. South Africa, where he went to university and where he decided to become a writer, is a very significant place in his life.

He recalls growing up in Kenya, following his siblings and mimicking their behavior, all the while possessing a keen awareness that he was different even at seven years old. His sister Ciru, in particular, made him feel grounded. She was the family favorite, always even-tempered, and she excelled academically.



Wainaina reminisces about one of the first memories that forced him to come to terms with the world, watching the burial of Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, and the ushering in of the Moi era. Because of the change of leadership during their time in school, Ciru and Wainaina were both passed up by top high schools in spite of their impressive grades. Wainaina describes the corruption of the system; due to an infraction during the testing process, all of the children of the Gikuyu tribe were unfairly disqualified, preventing them from gaining access to the top schools.

When Wainaina went to university in South Africa, he fell into a deep depression and struggled to attend his classes. He began to cope in unhealthy ways, including drinking and partying. At a certain point, things got so bad, Wainaina, suffering both physically and emotionally, was unable to leave his room. He returned home to spend some time recovering, and eventually, returned to university to give it a second try. Upon his return, his old demons were waiting for him. He once again was caught up in the old familiar lifestyle he had left behind. This time, however, he was determined to make a go of it and not to return home until he had accomplished what he set out to do.

Even in his darkest times, Wainaina describes his voracious appetite for literature and his devotion to the written word above all else. His depressive episodes kept him isolated but still reading, consuming sometimes two or three books in a day. He would buy books even when he had no money, gladly sacrificing a meal in place of a good book.



He started chatting with writers all over the world on Internet chat sites. Fellow writers encouraged Wainaina, urging him to submit his work for publication. His first publication, a reflection on growing up with his Ugandan family, appeared in the travel section of South Africa’s Sunday Times.

Wainaina recalls, a few years later, making a phone call to his mother to announce that his first piece of writing had been published. He found out that she had passed away that day, and he was unable to share the good news. This was a huge blow to him, as he had always wanted to make his mother proud and to show her that he could make it as a writer. Eventually, he abandoned his degree in commerce and entrepreneurship, committing to writing full-time.

Wainaina continued to pursue writing, eventually gaining recognition for his talents through the Cain Prize for African Writing. This prize helped him to get his name out there and launch his career. After winning the prize, he was approached by the European Union which wanted him to work for them as a writer. While he was originally excited about the opportunity, he declined the offer when he found out that they would be editing and censoring his work.



By the end of the book, Wainaina has left his beloved Africa and is now in the Hudson Valley of New York. He has been published in several revered magazines including Granta and Vanity Fair, something that seemed like a pipe dream when he was growing up in a land without opportunity.