"Stories we tell": queer narratives in Kenya

Queer expressions in Kenya are caught up in various discourses of law, religion, desire, nationhood, fantasy, language, aspirations and cultural codes. As a result of these interplays that rub against each other, contradictions about queer expressions become evident. To contextualise queer expressions in Kenya, and to usefully tease out these contradictions, an understanding of Kenya's lived realities that cohere around these discourses can be explored using an enabling narrative framework. This framework relates to how the various discourses are produced, circulated and understood about queer lives. To this end I read Stories of Our Lives (2015), a queer archival project, to show how queer bodies narrate their lives in Kenya in ways that potentially create meanings and create subjectivity against a contradictory background. This practice of queer narration is understood not as an attempt at presenting a coherent body of selves but, rather, as a conscious rendition of particular cognitions of queer analysis which ultimately becomes a site of and for new meanings for queer selves.