There is more to the creative process than writing

By Henry Munene

The dust may have settled somewhat on the raging debate on Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider, but I still feel impelled to put in my two cents.

When I first read the book — the unabridged version — it struck me as a beautiful work of cultural art; definitely not the kind of book you would expect people to dismiss as a celebration of homosexuality. I also found sex claims shocking, because the contents are far from the kind of lurid scenes you see in David Maillu’s After 4.30.

First, Ihimaera’s book is a creative exposition of the tapestry that forms the Maori culture and a rich portrayal of a people whose past, as seen through the life and times of the main character, Kahu, is intertwined with their fate. To me, it is an enlightening and well-written coming-of-age novel, to which literary enthusiasts give the term bildungsroman. 

Koro Apirana, the elderly custodian of the people’s ways, is depicted as a conservative man wallowing in patriarchy and arrogance. When time to pass on the chiefdom to the next generation comes, he is annoyed that his first grandchild is a girl, Kahu. He even blames the ‘bad luck’ on his wife’s genes, before going to sulk out at sea.

Hypocritical

Throughout the novel, Koro is portrayed as harbouring nothing but contempt for Kahu, who, ironically, spends all her childhood trying to win the old man’s love. Through this powerful characterisation, the reader is primed to dislike the old ‘bugger’, so much that I was shocked when Nairobi moral purists came to his rescue just because ‘paka’, as he is called by Nani Flowers and even Kahu, means ‘bugger’ or ‘gay’.

Now, the whole of Nairobi listens to a popular radio show every weekday and the host keeps calling everyone ‘bugger’. Good hypocritical people, do we ever complain?

Again, the book creatively educates the reader on the Maori people’s ways. Literature is a powerful tool that helps us understand and appreciate others.

Besides culture, the story of Kahu is full of universal realities that every society has to contend with; changing times, searching for roots and identity and striving to fulfil one’s mission in life.

Seen this way, The Whale Rider is in the same league with Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease, which juxtaposes the Igbo myths with the post-modern reality encountered in Europe. Such books paint for us the cultural tensions that result from a clash between traditions and modernity.

It is the same tension that drives Ezeulu insane in Arrow of God. This same reality faces Elesin, who is stopped before committing the Yoruba ritual suicide by a European called Simon Pikings in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman.

In American Literature, The Whale Rider calls to mind C W Smith’s Buffalo Nickel, which shows how the Kiowa Indians found themselves at a crossroads after the arrival of commercial oil business.

At such a crossroads, sacrifices have to be made wisely, just as happens when Koro Apirana finally drops his conservative arrogance and lets Kahu perform her preordained role, a role would have been taboo for women earlier on.

Many authors take clarification of their people’s ways as their social responsibility, especially when their societies come into contact with others. No one wants his people’s ways to be viewed the way Christopher Columbus described the Native Americans, as a ‘small, war-like people’.

It is why Achebe had to clarify his people’s ways in Things Fall Apart, like Ngugi did in The River Between, Grace Ogot in Land Without Thunder, and Henry ole Kulet in On Becoming a Man, to name but a few.

I was shocked that all we see in this great book are farfetched sexual connotations, which many latched on to demand that The Whale Rider be banned from the set book list.  It is laughable that when the narrator in The Whale Rider moves in with Bernard in Papua New Guinea, we conclude that he is homosexual. Many of us stay with friends and relatives when we first come to Nairobi, but no one crows ‘same-sex marriage’.

Taboo

Talking of hypocrisy, we have occasional street demos by gay people in Nairobi and other towns. Let’s face it: These things happen in our schools, universities, markets, prisons, madhouses and other such places.

African literature has always blossomed on the wings of controversial debates and taboo issues, such as women seeking equality in the 70s. Is it not time our literature ventured into this taboo area instead of demonising this book that does not strike me as gay literature?

Another trouble here is that there is no guarantee that another moral debate will not erupt even after we replace The Whale Rider with another text. You see, writing is only one part of the creative process. Readers are not passive consumers; they bring to the text their own imagination, creating a new story out of the one they are reading, sometimes seeing homosexuality where none was intended.

Finally, set books rake in millions in this country. I would not be surprised if it turns out that the whole debate was fuelled by industry players who got no set book approved and are now clutching at straws.

I have seen harmless books like Achebe’s A Man of the People, dismissed on frivolous grounds such as having no basis in terms of textual evidence. And it was all championed by churchgoing Nairobians who even take their children to the bar; and who celebrate mpango wa kando on national radio as if it is some form of high art.