http://www.africaresearch.org/Papers/J06/Jalc06Lws.pdf
http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/Journal%20of%20the%20University
%20of%20Zimbabwe/vol21n1/juz021001003.pdf
http://textandcommunity.gmu.edu/2009/resources/bravman.pdf
http://textandcommunity.gmu.edu/2009/resources/wright.pdf
http://textandcommunity.gmu.edu/2009/resources/thomas.pdf
http://textandcommunity.gmu.edu/2009/resources/mcwilliams.pdf
http://textandcommunity.gmu.edu/2009/resources/interview-89.pdf
http://textandcommunity.gmu.edu/2009/resources/interview-93.pdf
http://textandcommunity.gmu.edu/2009/resources/this-time.pdf
Interviews
Christianse, Yvette. "Power Struggles: Tsitsi Dangarembga and Achmat
Dangor." PEN America: A Journal for Writers and Readers 7 (2006): 125-33.
Focuses on Dangarembga's early education; debates the role of
literature/film in political struggle; asserts the lack of a conversation
about race and conflict in Zimbabwe; describes the "Anglo-Saxon Axis"
that heavily contours the possibilities of arts funding in Zimbabwe.
**NOT AVAILABLE THROUGH GMU E-JOURNALS--ILLIAD ONLY.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. "This
8.10-11 (July 1991): 43-4.
Year, Next Year." Women's Review of Books
Dangarembga talks about the circumstances of her publishing Nervous
Conditions.
George, Rosemary Marangoly and Helen Scott. "An
Interview with Tsitsi
Dangarembga." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 26.3 (1993 Spring): 309-19.
Dangarembga answers questions about the reception of and responses
to NC, the role of literature in Zimbabwean culture, the nature of
rebellion, the challenges that women writers face, and the role that
female figures play in narrating and embodying colonial history.
Lee, Christopher Joon-Hai. "Desperately
Seeking Tsitsi: A
Conversation with Tsitsi Dangarembga." Transition 13.2 [Issue 96]
(2006): 128-50.
Lee focuses on Dangarembga's transition into film from literature.
Dangarembga describes her tenure at a German film school from
1989-1997, her interest in moving away from a "documentary" film
aesthetic into a more stylized mode of storytelling, and the
establishment of her production company, Nyerai films. She also
provides details about the debut of her film Kare Kare Zvako (English
title: Mother's Day) at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.
Rooney, Caroline. "Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga." Wasafiri: The
Transnational Journal of International Writing 51 (Summer 2007): 57-62.
Rooney asks questions about the publication of the NC sequel, The
Book of Not, and the challenges it brought Dangarembga as a writer.
Dangarembga also discusses the role of fiction and film--particularly
"development film" in a documentary mode--in countering or
addressing a history of violence in Zimbabwe. The article is a bit
oblique at times if you haven't read The Book of Not.
Veit-Wild, Flora. "'Women
Write about the Things That Move
Them': Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga." Matatu: Journal for African
Culture and Society 3.6 (1989): 101-108. Rpt. Moving Beyond Boundaries.
Vol. 2: Black Women's Diasporas. Ed. Carole Boyce Davies. NY: New York UP.
27-31.
Veit-Wild asks Dangarembga about the degree to which NC is
autobiographical, and how it reflects her own personal experiences
growing up. Dangarembga also speaks about other writers who have
influenced her, including James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, and Leo
Tolstoy.
Scholarly Criticism
Nervous Conditions has attracted the attention of scholars working in a wide
range of academic fields--women's studies, anthropology, postcolonial studies,
linguistics, and on and on. As a result, when starting to conduct research on
Dangarembga's novel, a bit of orientation might be helpful. Below you will find
a list of articles, books, and chapters that begin to demonstrate the scope and
volume of scholarly criticism that Nervous Conditions has generated. Each
entry has been annotated, offering a brief glimpse of the argument and the
main themes addressed by the author. To get started, here's a quick reference
guide organized by topic, suggesting which authors to try first if you're
interested in a particular subject area:







On strategies for teaching Nervous Conditions and general
introduction: see Bravman/Montgomery, Eck, and Willey
On subversion/resistance: see Aberbach, Aegerter, McWilliams, Stone,
and Uwakweh
On psychoanalysis and the influence of Frantz Fanon: see Boehmer
and Counihan
On language: see Donadey, Gorle, and Thompson
On genre/narration: see Collins, Flockemann, Katrin, Mule, Okonkwo,
and Sugnet
On hysteria/illness: see Bahri, Nair, Thomas, and Wright
On the social histories shaping the novel: see Katrin, Lenta, Searle and
Shaw
*Unless otherwise noted, sources are available through the e-journal
databases on the GMU library website.
Aberbach, David. "Enlightenment and Cultural Confusion: Mendele's The Mare
and Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions.
Aberbach wants to read Tambu as a minority "victim of
enlightenment," in which Tambu's insight gained through education
becomes a source of unbearable pain rather than an escape from the
"poverty trap," as Tambu had initially hoped. Aberbach refers to
Tambu's predicament as the condition of "negative identity," in which
she has internalized colonial oppressions of Shona culture rather than
breaking free of them.
Aegerter, Lindsay Pentolfe. "A Dialectic of Autonomy and Community: Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature
15.2 (1996 Fall): 231-40.
Aegerter analyzes the ways in which Tambu and Nyasha resist
oversimplification of the African woman's position and assert agency by
carving out new sites for representation between tradition and
resistance. Nyasha's critique of assimilation assists Tambu in avoiding
the alienation from Shona culture that Nhama experienced.
Bahri, Deepika. "Disembodying the Corpus: Postcolonial Pathology in Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." Postmodern Culture: An Electronic
Journal of Interdisciplinary Criticism 5.1 (1994 Sept).
Bahri Focuses on Nyasha's eating disorders, arguing that her "diseased
self suggests the textualized female body on whose abject person are
writ large the imperial inscriptions of colonization, the intimate
branding of patriarchy, and the battle between native culture, Western
narrative, and her complex relationship with both."
Berndt, Katrin. Female Identity in Contemporary Zimbabwean Fiction
(Bayreuth African Studies 73). Beyreuth, Germany: Beyreuth University,
2005.
Berndt's monograph contains chapters on social, historical, and literary
background shaping Dangarembga and her contemporaries; identity
construction; the importance of the Bildungsroman; the role of
orature; etc.
Boehmer, Elleke. "Versions of Yearning and Dissent: The Troping of Desire in
Yvonne Vera and Tsitsi Dangarembga." Matatu 29-30 (2005): 113-28.
Boehmer attempts to counter a perceived silence in postcolonial
studies on queer sexualities in Africa. She attempts to define
queerness not as explicit content or theme, but as a "searching and
interrogative approach to relations between women, and to women's
sexual identity." She thus focuses her analysis on the way links
between women in NC could be read as a kind of queer resistance.
**NOT AVAILABLE THROUGH GMU E-JOURNALS--ILLIAD ONLY.
Bravman, Bill and Mary Montgomery. "Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous
Conditions." African Novels in the Classroom. Ed. Margaret Jean Hay. Boulder:
Lynne Reinner, 2000. 97-105.
Bravman and Montgomery provide an overview of the novel and
suggest teaching strategies.
Collins, Walter P. "The 'Lightening of Various Darknesses': Tambu's Tortuous
Path to Development in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." Tracing
Personal Expansion: Reading Selected Novels as Modern African
Bildungsromane. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006. 71-90.
Collins is interested in reading NC as an African Bildungsroman, a
genre in which the protagonist follows a conflicted path towards
ultimate enlightenment and escape. He also argues that Tambu's
experience as an individual character is intended to embody and reflect
the experiences of Zimbabwe as a nation on its "conflicted path" as it
acquired independence from English colonial rule.
Counihan, Clare. "Reading the Figure of Woman in African Literature:
Psychoanalysis, Difference, and Desire." Research in African Literatures 38.2
(Summer 2007): 161-80.
Counihan is interested in the relationship between race and sexuality in
the psychoanalytical critiques of colonialism written by Frantz Fanon
and Homi Bhabha. She argues that, for Fanon and Bhabha, racial
difference is equated with and reduced to sexual difference--and, as a
result, she claims that we should question the role that psychoanalysis
plays in understanding the dynamics of postcolonial societies. She
proposes two alternatives to psychoanalysis: reading for the "dispersal
of desire" (the entwinement of race, gender, and sexuality), and
reading for the "ghost in the postcolonial" (the woman who is
simultaneously absent and present in different narratives). As
examples of these absent-present women, she analyzes the characters
of Ezinma in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and Nyasha in NC.
Donadey, Anne. "Overlapping and Interlocking Frames for Humanities Literary
Studies: Assia Djebar, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Gloria Anzaldua." College
Literature 34.4 (Fall 2007): 22-42.
Regarding Dangarembga, Donadey focuses on the novel's Shonainflected English. She tracks the necessity and implications of "codeswitching" between English and Shona for the characters in NC. She
also clarifies the particular meanings of many of the Shona words used
in NC that Dangarembga does not explicitly define.
Eck, Lisa. "Thinking Globally, Teaching Locally: The "Nervous Conditions" of
Cross-Cultural Literacy." College English 70.6 (Jul 2008): 578-98.
Eck describes in detail her first experience teaching the novel at
Framingham State College in Massachusetts with thirty-seven students
in the spring of 2004. She addresses the role of "intractable cultural
difference in the world literature classroom." Eck is interested in
teaching NC via an invitation for American students to identify with the
African characters coupled with a warning against overidentifying with
them--she describes this tactic as a kind of "nervous dissonance," or
"teaching in opposite directions."
Flockemann, Miki. "'Not-Quite Insiders and Not-Quite Outsiders': The 'Process
of Womanhood' in Beka Lamb, Nervous Conditions, and Daughters of the
Twilight." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 27.1 (1992): 37-47.
Flockemann compares NC with two other examples of the female
Bildungsroman, in which the coming of age of a colonial protagonist is
counterpointed by that of another less successful female character. In
all three, education enables but also complicates the protagonist's
resistance to patriarchy and the success of her integration into a postcolonial context.
Gorle, Gilian. "Fighting the Good Fight: What Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous
Conditions Says about Language and Power." Yearbook of English Studies 27
(1997): 179-92.
Gorle examines the ways in which language functions as an indicator of
cultural hegemony and an agent of alienation as well as power. She
argues that the novel's refusal of closure leaves unresolved the
success of Tambu's negotiation of "Englishness" and tradition.
Lenta, Margaret. "Fiction and History: Unity Dow's Juggling Truths and Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." The English Academy Review 22 (2005):
43-54.
Lenta focuses on the relationship between NC and the historical
backdrop of the fight for colonial independence. She argues that NC,
like Nadine Gordimer's anti-apartheid novels, writes a "history from the
inside," demonstrating the inner life and "interactive personalities" of
women excluded from "official" histories.
McWilliams, Sally. "Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions: At the
Crossroads of Feminism and Post-Colonialism." World Literature
Written in English 31.1 (Spring 1991): 103-12.
McWilliams relates Tambu's experiences to various post-colonial
theories about how dominant cultures construct an inferior other to
reinforce their own power.
Mule, Katwiwa. "Blurred Genres, Blended Memories: Engendering Dissidence
in Nawal el Saadawi's Memoirs of a Woman Doctor and Tsitsi Dangarembga's
Nervous Conditions." Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 6.2
(2006): 93-116.
Mule argues that NC should be read as a subversive autobiography,
rather than simply as a novel or Bildungsroman. More broadly, the
author suggests that challenging the boundaries imposed by "genre"
can be a method of achieving politically and culturally resistant
subjectivities.
Nair, Supriya. "Melancholic Women: The Intellectual Hysteric(s) in Nervous
Conditions." Research in African Literatures 26.2 (1995 Summer): 130-39.
Nair contrasts Tambu's use of education to escape limited options to
the demonizing treatment of colonial education as a force of alienation
in the work of African male novelists like Achebe and Ngugi.
Okonkwo, Christopher. "Space Matters: Form and Narrative in Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." Research in African Literatures 34.2
(Summer 2003): 53-74.
Okonkwo argues that the foundational strength of NC lies in the
complexity of its narrative style. He believes that there is a reciprocity
between form and content in the novel that contains the novel's most
enduring political significance. This reciprocity can be seen most clearly
by paying attention to the motif of space: traps, exclusions,
marginality, and--most importantly--methods for negotiating shared
spaces, both material and symbolic.
Searle, Allison. "The Role of Missions in Things Fall Apart and Nervous
Conditions." Literature and Theology 21.1 (Mar 2007): 49-65.
Searle explores the tension between universal truth claims and 'the
particulars of a given culture or locality" in representations of Christian
missionaries in colonial Africa. These tensions, she claims, stem in part
from paradoxical conceptualizations of a Christian mission as a
fundamentally "cross-cultural enterprise." The author also contrasts
education as pacifying "benefaction" and education as the development
of resistant critical faculties.
Shaw, Carolyn Martin. "'You had a daughter, but I am becoming a woman':
Sexuality, Feminism, and Postcoloniality in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous
Conditions and She No Longer Weeps." Research in African Literatures 38.4
(Winter 2007): 7-27.
Shaw argues that, in both these works by Dangarembga, "sexuality
offers the promise of freedom, entails a loss of security, and delivers
punishment." The author is an anthropologist who conducted field work
in Zimbabwe, and thus she provides useful information about the
historical and social conditions in which NC is set--including the history
of the women's movement in Zimbabwe.
Stone, E. Kim. "In the Bedroom: The Formation of Single Women's
Performative Space in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." The Journal
of Commonwealth Literature 41.1 (2006): 111-26.
Stone focuses on "the formation of female intellectual subjectivity"
within the patriarchal national imaginary. In particular, the author
argues that the novel troubles an easy subordination-subversion
binary. Instead of that binary, it fosters a "spatial politics of resistance"
in the creation of empowered selves. In other words, as philosopher
Judith Butler might put it, "spaces that matter" (like the bedroom)
produce "bodies that matter" (like Nyasha's and Tambu's).
Sugnet, Charles. "Nervous Conditions: Dangarembga's Feminist Reinvention of
Fanon." The Politics of (M)othering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in
African Literature. Ed. Obioma Nnaemeka. New York: Taylor & Francis, 1997.
33-49. Available through http://scholar.google.com
Sugnet argues that the novel's portrayal of various female strategies
for emotional survival enables them to resist being reduced to an
essentialized female identity in service to nationalist goals. He also
considers the reasons why neither tradition nor feminist liberation offer
sufficient grounds for female identity. He includes some suggestive
comments about how the limited character Tambu becomes the
analytical narrator Tambu.
Thomas, Sue. "Killing the Hysteric in the Colonized's House: Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." The Journal of Commonwealth Literature
27.1 (1992): 26-36.
Influential essay dealing with eating disorders and other behaviors as
symptoms of hysterical resistance to oppression. See Thomas's 2003
listing for revised and expanded version.
_____ . "Rewriting
Dangarembga's
the Hysteric as Anorexic in Tsitsi
Nervous Conditions." Scenes of the Apple: Food and the
Female Body in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Women's Writing. Ed.
Tamar Heller and Patricia Moran. Albany: State University of New York Press,
2003. 183-98.
This is a revised and expanded version of Thomas's 1992 essay
arguing that Dangarembga revises Fanon's theories about the effects
of colonization on the native by demonstrating the ways in which
Shona patriarchy is a parallel system of repressive authority. It
examines hysteria as forms of behavior (in both male and female)
forced by enslavement to patriarchal and/or colonial master narratives.
Thompson, Katrina Daly. "The Mother Tongue and Bilingual Hysteria:
Translation Metaphors in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." Journal of
Commonwealth Literature 43.2 (2008): 49-63.
Thompson argues that NC is an "extended metaphor of translation." In
that sense, Tambu's and Nyasha's "linguistic struggles" (described in
the novel variously as "escape," "transformation," "dislodgement,"
"assimilation," and "brainwashing") are "attempts to translate
themselves from one language and culture to another--attempts which
are hindered by those who fear such hybridity.
Uwakweh, Pauline Ada. "Debunking Patriarchy: The Liberational Quality of
Voicing in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." Research in African
Literatures 26.1 (1995 Spring): 75-84.
This essay surveys the ways in which patriarchy oppresses women in
the novel and how they resist its pressures.
Willey, Ann Elizabeth and Jeanette Treiber eds. Negotiating the Postcolonial:
Emerging Perspectives on Tsitsi Dangarembga. Trenton, NJ: Africa World
Press, 2002.
Wright, Derek. "Chapter
Seven: Regurgitating Colonialism: The
Feminist Voice in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." New
Directions in African Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1997. 108-22.
Wright analyzes the figurative and literal similarities between
consuming education and consuming food and examines the wider
metaphorical implications of illness. He comments on the ways binaries
like intelligence/emotion and rationality/sensuality serves the ends of
patriarchal power.
Literary Intertexts
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1959.
TFA is frequently touted as the seminal African novel in English. Many
scholars argue that Nervous Conditions constitutes a feminist response
to Achebe's work, as Dangarembga underscores a set of patriarchal
social structures working oppressively in tandem with the colonial
presence to circumscribe the opportunities of African women.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. The Book of Not. 2006.
TBON is the sequel to NC, tracing the fate of Tambu and her family
during Zimbabwe's liberation struggle.
_____ . "Tambu's
Choice." Transition 13.2 [Issue 96] (2006): 108-26.
Short story adapted from The Book of Not, the sequel to Nervous
Conditions.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Published in French in 1961.
TWOTE is a seminal work of postcolonial criticism by Frantz Fanon
written during Algeria's fight for independence from France.
Dangarembga's title, "Nervous Conditions," is taken from philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre's preface to Fanon's book, in which he states: "The
status of 'native' is a nervous condition." Dangarembga's title thus
underscores the importance of understanding the psychological effects-in addition to the material and political effects--that the colonial
experience had on those it subjugated.
Tsitsi Dangarembga (b.
Nervous Conditions
1959)
(1988)
interviews with the author,
links, scholarly articles & additional
sources
study guide: Characters, Family
Relationships, Places,
Reading & Discussion Questions
Ethnic Group: Shona
Zimbabwe
related links
Southeast Africa
related links & literary map
"Nervous Conditions is that rare novel whose characters are unforgettable. . . .
Nervous Conditions introduces quite a new voice that, in its self-assurance, sounds, at times,
very old.
As if the African sisters, mothers, and cousins of antiquity were, at last, beginning to reassert
themselves
in these perilous times, and to speak. It is an expression of liberation not to be missed."
--Alice Walker (From book jacket notes in U.S. ed. of Nervous Conditions [Seattle: The Seal Press,
1988]).
"A girl's coming of age in a world shaped by conflicting cultures"
on Nervous Conditions, McDougal Littell's Literature Connections:
http://www.classzone.com/novelguides/litcons/nervous/guide.cfm
Interviews with the Author:
George, Rosemary Marangoly, and Helen Scott. "An
Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga." Novel (Spring
1993):309-319. [This interview was conducted at the African
Writers Festival, Brown Univ., Nov. 1991]
Excerpt from Introduction: "Written when the author was
twenty-five, Nervous Conditions put Dangarembga at the
forefront of the younger generation of African writers producing
literature in English today....Nervous Conditions highlights that
which is often effaced in postcolonial African literature in
English--the representation of young African girls and women as
worthy subjects of literature....While the critical reception of this
novel has focused mainly on the author's feminist agenda, in
[this] interview...Dangarembga stresses that she has moved
from a somewhat singular consideration of gender politics to an
appreciation of the complexities of the politics of postcolonial
subjecthood" (309).
Full text also available from EBSCOHost Academic Search
Elite, Article No. 9312270407.
Veit-Wild, Flora. [Interview with Dangarembga] "Women
Write about Things that Move Them." Matatu: Zeitschrift fur
afrikanische Kultur und Gesellschaft 3.6(1989): 101-108.
Wilkinson, Jane. "Tsitsi Dangarembga." Talking with
African Writers: Interviews with African Poets, Playwrights
and Novelists. London: James Currey, 1992. 189-198.
Tsitsi Dangarembga (b. 1959) was interviewed 4 Sept. 1989
in London by Jane Wilkinson, and I here highlight some
points made in that interview. There seem to be many
autobiographical parallels between Tsitsi’s and Tambu’s lives,
although Tambudzai (supposed to be 13 in 1968 in the novel)
would be slightly older than Dangarembga (who was 9 in 1968).
Dangarembga says that she wrote of "things I had observed and
had had direct experience with," but "larger than any one
person’s own tragedies…[with] a wider implication and origin
and therefore were things that needed to be told" (190).
One important theme in Nervous Conditions is that of—
especially the danger of Tambu’s forgetting who she is, where
she came from—as her brother Nhamo did. Dangarembga
acknowledges this in the interview (191). "I personally do not
have a fund of our cultural tradition or oral history to draw from,
but I really did feel that if I am able to put down the little I know
then it’s a start" (191). Nyasha, the author says, doesn’t have
anything to forget, for she never knew, was never taught her
culture and origins—and this forms "some great big gap inside
her." "Tambudzai, on the other hand is quite valid in saying that
she can’t forget because she has that kind of experience.
Nyasha is so worried about forgetting because it’s not there for
her to remember. Tambudzai is so sure that this is the
framework of her very being that there is no way that she would
be able to forget it" (191-192).
Dangarembga was born in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia),
spent ages 2-6 in Britain where she began her schooling. She
notes that she and her brother began to speak English there "as
a matter of course and forgot most of the Shona that we had
learnt" (196). When they returned to Zimbabwe, when she was
six, she learned Shona again and later attended mission school
in Mutare and then a private American convent school.
Dangarembga notes that she didn’t learn "much about anything
indigenous at all" in these schools (190). She cites one problem
that Zimbabwean people of her generation—and Nyasha’s—
have is "that we really don’t have a tangible history that we can
relate to" (191); "that was the [colonized] system we were living
under. Even the history was written in such a way that a child
who did not want to accept that had to reject it and have
nothing"—which, she states, is Nyasha’s problem (198).
Dangarembga also calls her first language English—the
language used all through her education—and Shona her
second language: "Sometimes I worry about Shona: how long
it’s going to survive….There are very few people who can speak
good Shona and even fewer who can write it. Maybe we’ve
caught it just in time with the [Zimbabwean] Government’s
policies of traditional culture and so forth, so maybe it’s not as
sad as it seems" (196). Later on when Dangarembga was
working in a publishing house, Zimbabwean historians were
beginning to "rewrite the history. I was editing this Grade Seven
text and I can remember saying to my editor that, if I had read
that particular version of history when I had been at school, I
would have been a much more integrated person" (197-198).
Dangarembga went back to England, to Cambridge Univ. in
1977, to study medicine, but returned to Zimbabwe in 1980, just
before independence (earned after some 15 years of warfare). It
was then, Dangarembga says in the interview, that she "began
to feel the need for an African literature that I could read and
identify with," first through reading "Afro-American women
writers" (194-195). During independence celebrations, she
heard a beautiful Shona poem recited—an oral arts
performance, not a written poem—and "it brought back to me
that we have an oral language here. It isn’t written, it’s oral, and
when it is reproduced in the medium in which it is meant to be, it
is absolutely astounding. But it was also a painful experience: to
think we’d lost so much of it." (195)—this "wealth of literature"
that hadn’t been written down. "It is good to have people like
Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. They were the people I think
who really pointed me in the direction of African literature as
such as opposed to Afro-American literature" (195).
She worked in an ad agency, studied psychology at the
Univ. of Zimbabwe, then enrolled in a drama group, found an
outlet for her creative leanings, and wrote 3 plays, including She
No Longer Weeps (1987). Dangarembga notes that "There were
simply no plays with roles for black women, or at least we didn’t
have access to them at the time. The writers in Zimbabwe were
basically men at the time. And so I really didn’t see that the
situation would be remedied unless some woman sat down and
wrote something, so that’s what I did!" (196). Nervous
Conditions was Dangarembga’s first novel, written in 1985 and
published in 1988. Dangarembga had some trouble getting her
novel accepted for publication until she took it to a women’s
publishing house [Doris "Lessing explains how Nervous
Conditions was rejected by four Zimbabwe publishers, and was
not published within the country until Women's Press in London
first published it. According to Lessing, it was "criticized by male
critics as being 'negative,' and presenting an unfair picture of the
lives of black women" (423; cited in Saliba n. 1)].
When asked why she wrote about childhood, Dangarembga
says that "if at the age of twenty-six somebody has a story to tell
it’s likely to be about growing up! Also I’m always conscious at
the back of my mind that there is very little that a woman in
Zimbabwe can pick up – in Zimbabwe today – and say yes, I
know, that’s me….Because I know I felt that gap so dreadfully"
(197) of there being very little literature by and about African
women that she could relate to. After receiving the
Commonwealth Writers’ Award in August 1989, she went to
Berlin to study filmmaking. (She has since directed the film
Everybody’s Child.) Dangarembga says there are many
Zimbabwean women writers now, but most write in either Shona
or Ndebele so they haven’t acquired an international audience
(197).
Seal Press "Interview with the Author," is included
in current HUM 211 course text of Nervous Conditions, pp. 205-208.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. [First published 1988.]
3rd ed. New York: Seal Press, 2002. [ISBN: 1-58005-063-8, paperback]
Tsitsi Dangarembga, by Rebecca Grady, 1997,
for Postcolonial Studies at Emory Univ., with bibliography and links:
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Dangar.html
Tsitsi Dangarembga (b. 1959)
Pegasos (Petri Liukkonen, Finland), 2003:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tsitsi.htm
"Everyone's Child," California Newreel:
http://www.newsreel.org/films/everyone.htm
The videotape Everyone's Child, dir. Tsitsi Dangarembga, is held by COCC
Library.
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NERVOUS CONDITIONS: Study Guide
Characters, Family Relationships, Places, Reading & Study Questions
Characters
Tambudzai or Tambu: the narrator and one of the main characters of the
novel.
Mainini (“Mother” in Shona: see below) refers to Tambu’s mother, and she is
cited as one of the four women Tambu loved whose story the novel is
intended to tell. She is resident “Mother” of the Sigauke homestead and
called Mainini by other relatives in respect of her position; her given name is
sometimes appended, as when she is called Mainini Ma’Shingayi.
Jeremiah is the Christianized name of Tambu’s father; he is Babamukuru’s
brother.
Nhamo: Tambu’s older brother who dies early in the novel; son of Jeremiah
and Mainini Ma’Shingayi
Netsai and Rambanai are Tambu’s sisters; later a brother Dambudzai is also
born.
Babamukuru: the head of the Siguake family and Tambu’s uncle; after
completing his education in England from 1960-1965, Babamurkuru returned
to Rhodesia to assume the position of headmaster of the primary level of the
mission school at Umtali; he has the title of Academic Director of the
protestant church’s Manicaland region. He is also called Babawa Chido by
his wife. Lucia early on calls him her mwaramu, an assertion of claim to
patrilineal relationship (see below) and a male relational title of respect.
Later, however, when she seeks to assert a stronger claim of patrilineal
kinship relation in Umtali, Lucia calls him Babamukuru, a “more dignified”
term of higher respect for his position as head of the Sigauke family.
Maiguru is Babamukuru’s educated wife, and also one of the four women
Tambu loved whose story the novel is intended to tell. Maiguru also teaches
at the Umtali mission school; she is mother to Chido (son) and Nyasha. Her
husband sometimes calls her Ma’Chido; Lucia refers to her a Maiguruku (“ku” a familiarizing suffix).
Nyasha is a second major character in the novel, another one of the four
women Tambu loved whose story the novel is intended to tell. Nyasha is
Babamukuru and Maiguru’s daughter, Tambu’s beloved cousin and close
friend. She is called “Anglicized” because she has spent her early years of
education in England with her parents, speaks British English, and has
adopted English ways.
Chido is Nyasha’s brother and Tambu’s male cousin, another “Anglicized”
Sigauke. He attends the elite and costly multiracial government school in
Salisbury with his white friends, Mr. Baker’s sons.
Anna is Babamukuru and Maiguru’s serving woman
Lucia is the younger sister of Tambu’s mother Mainini, who comes to the
homestead to to help with the work when her sister is ailing.
Takesure is a distant male cousin of Babamukuru; he comes to live at the
Sigauke homestead ostensibly to help Jeremiah with the work.
Mr. Baker is one of the “strange” whites at the Umtali mission; his children
are Nyaradzo (daughter), a good friend and agemate of Nyasha’s; Andrew
and Brian, Mr. Baker’s sons, are good friends and school fellows of Chido.
Babamunini Thomas is brother to Babamukuru and Jeremiah, a male
patriarch of the Sigauke clan.
Mainini Patience is Babamunini Thomas’ wife.
Tete Gladys is sister (“of the womb”) to Babamukuru, Jeremiah, and
Babamunini Thomas, a female patriarch of the Sigauke clan.
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Family Relationships
The Shona, including the Siguake family, follow a patrilineal (descent
through males) kinship system , and practice patrilocality whereby, after
marriage, the bride leaves her home to live with or near her husband’s
family. Under patriliny, the lines of descent and authority are traced through
fathers: a man and his brothers, their children, and their sons’ children are
counted members of the same descent group. Fathers, and the family’s male
head of the family especially, are owed respect and obedience as the
immediate representative of the lineage or clan (often identified by a totem).
Children tend to view fathers and male family heads as emotionally distant
disciplinary authorities, whatever the degree of affection they may have for
each other. A wife, at the time of her marriage, exchanges the authority of her
father for that of her husband, and in many patrilineal societies of southern
Africa, a wife is gradually absorbed into her husband’s patrilineal descent
group. Women are also counted members of patrilineal descent group, but a
sister’s or daughter’s children will belong to their fathers’ rather than their
mother’s kinship groups. Matrilineal (“mother’s side”) links are of secondary
importance in the social scheme. (Note that Maiguru, followed by Lucia, may
upon occasion dissociate themselves from the patrilineally traced clan of
their husbands.)
Patrilineal Shona marriages, and the children that result, are traditionally
legitimized by exchange of roora, or “bridewealth,” in which the bride’s
family group accepts livestock, other movable property, and more recently
cash or opportunities for earning cash, in compensation for the loss of their
daughter’s labor and fertility. Roora is rarely paid in full or all at once, for the
bride’s group often maintains leverage over their in-laws by keeping the
groom and his kin in their debt (note that Takesure is still paying off roora for
his second wife). Bridewealth transactions have traditionally been
understood, not as calculated buying and selling of wives, but as symbolic
tokens of women’s value. More recently, however, with the monetized
economic shift to migrant labor systems or cash cropping in Africa,
bridewealth practices have often been transformed from cooperative
alliances between two extended families into purely private transactions
between the bride’s husband and her father--they alone may calculate the
bride’s monetary value and tend to treat the bride as a commodity. This
transformation has tended to foster economic individualism and
commoditize social relations with devastating effects on women of Shona,
Zulu, Swazi, and other patrilineal peoples of southeast Africa.
I thank Katrina Daly Thompson, Dept. of African Languages
and Literature, who has corrected some of my
mistranslations of Shona relational titles below:
Siguake Family “Patriarchy” consists of:
Babamukuru, who is "the head of the family, but not the extended family and
certainly not the clan. T
his is why Tambu is so confused when she has to serve all the men in the family"
(Thompson)
Jeremiah
Babamunini Thomas, and
Tete Gladys - "more specifically the tete is the father's sister, who is given
patriarchal respect because she is from
the male side of the family; all other aunts would be "mainini"s. Thus in the novel
only Gladys, Tambudzai's father's sister
is Tete; all other aunts are "mainini"s or "maiguru" (Thompson)
These characters are the participants in the family dare, or meeting of the
family patriarchy to address serious family business, recounted in chapter 7.
Shona kinship relations are complex and hierarchical; the terms used
variously to refer to the novel’s characters give us some indication of the
multiple and confusing titles of respect and status operative in familial
relationships.
Baba is a relational title of respect for adult male fathers in
Shona.
Mainini literally means "'Little/Young Mother' but is
used for an aunt married to a younger male of the family.
"Amai" (often shortened to "Mai") is the correct word
for mother. Thus the husband of a Mainini is "Babumunini"
(Little/Young Father) and a "Maiguru" is the opposite,
meaning "Big Mother" or aunt married to the eldest male
in the family (Babamukuru, Big/Elder Father)" (Thompson)
Mukoma, mukoma "means older sibling of the same sex as
the speaker. So a girl's mukoma would be her older
sister; Tambu and her sister use the term incorrectly in
the novel to refer to
Nhamo, who should be called their
'hanzvadzi' (sibling of the opposite sex)"
(Thompson)
Sisi is sister in Shona, and a relational title for unmarried
females of a family
Tete is aunt in Shona, and a relational title of respect for
adult females of a family
Nyamashewe is an opening ritual greeting, a paying of
respects followed by formal inquiries after others’ health, etc.
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Places
Rhodesia: at the time (1960s and early 1970s) of the events recounted in
Nervous Conditions, the name of the southeast African country, colonized by
the British, in which the characters live. At independence in 1980, the country
was renamed Zimbabwe (“stone house” in Shona). The capital of Rhodesia is
Salisbury, renamed Harare in post-independence Zimbabe. Another major
city mentioned is Bulawayo.
The homestead: the ancestral homesite and land of the Siguake family, of
whom Babawamukuru is the head. Tambu’s father, mother, children, and
other relatives, live at the rural Siguake homestead, which is 20 miles from
the town of Umtali.
kraal is traditionally the cattle enclosure central to a homestead; kraal is an
Afrikaans (Africanized Dutch) word of southern Africa.
hozi is a "a building used to store grain. In certain times of the year, if
emptied of grain, it might be used to house guests" (Thompson), one of
several structures of the homestead
Nyamarira River, near the homestead of the Siguake family.
Regional District Council Houses of the government are mentioned as being
less than a mile from Tambu’s childhood washing places on the Nyamarira
River.
Rutviki School is the local African school where Tambu begins her
education, near the homestead.
Umtali refers to the town where the mission school is located, as well as the
communal lands of the same region.
The mission school at Umtali is a British Protestant mission (therefore
probably Church of England or Anglican), and the school is primarily for
black African children, although some of the white missionary-teachers’
children, like Nyaradzo, also attend; Babamukuru is the headmaster of the
primary levels and Maiguru also teaches there. This is the school that first
Nhamo, then Tambu attends, as well as Nyasha.(To get an idea of what such
mission schools looked like, click this UNESCO exhibit Mission Settlements
in South Africa.)
Rhodesia school system, based on the British system, is divided into primary
and secondary divisions, similar to U.S. K-12 public school system.
Successively numbered forms are broken down into standards, categories
like “grades” in U.S. schools, but the age equivalents are different: for
example, 13-year-old Tambu mentions being in Standard 3 the year her
brother died (1968), which is below the Standard 5 level (usually 13-14 year
olds) she would have been in had she been able to attend school
continuously. To continue their schooling, African children must pass
fiercely competitive examinations administered frequently; at each higher
level, fewer places are available for qualifying black Africans, and the fees
are often too expensive even for the qualified African children to attend.
Beit Hall is site of the Christmas Party of chapter 6, and is located at the
Umtali mission school where Babamukuru is headmaster
Young Ladies College of the Sacret Heart is the exclusive, expensive, private
Roman Catholic convent school, located in Salisbury, at which Tambu earns
one of the few places and scholarships reserved for black African girls.
Tambu mentions that at Sacred Heart she can continue study all the way to A
Level of Rhodesian pre-university education without having to take and pass
the the yearly competitive exams continually threatening to exclude African
children from continuing their education.
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Reading & Study Questions to Consider
Title & Epigraph: Read the two critics' commentary
below and consider their interpretations of signficance of the title
and epigraph to Dangarembga's novel:
"The title, Nervous Conditions, comes from a statement
Dangarembga uses as the prologue to her novel - 'The
condition of native is a nervous condition' - taken from the
[Jean-Paul Sartre's] introduction to Frantz Fanon's The
Wretched of the Earth (1963), in which he wrote about the
psychosocial effects of colonization. Thus, illness is a
preexistent, thematic condition under which the events of the
novel take place. For Nyasha and Tambu, the condition of native
as a nervous condition comprises not only colonization but also
the condition of gender and the condition of female education.
Their attempts to function in a society that does not allow them
socially acceptable verbal or written outlets as educated, female
Africans result in their being punished for inappropriate
expressions of dissatisfaction and anger" (Hill).
"Nervous Conditions acquires its title from Jean-Paul
Sartre's introduction to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the
Earth [first published in 1963], which states, 'The colonial
condition is a nervous condition.' The effects of colonization
permeate the text, which examines a plurality of nervous
conditions, especially sexual colonization resulting from the
social construction of male privilege within African society.
Tambudzai's coming-of-age story takes place within this context
and charts the resistances of various female characters within
her extended family to the multiple oppressions of sexism,
racism, colonialism, and capitalism" (Saliba).
Ch. 1 (pp. 1-12), Ch. 2 (pp. 13-34), and Ch.
3 (pp. 35-57)
1. The narrator Tambudzai, or Tambu, opens the novel by stating flatly, “I
was not sorry when my brother died.” She later brings us back to opening
moment of the novel again in chapter 3, when Nhamo is late returning from
school as expected.Why isn’t Tambudzai sorry that her brother Nhamo has
died? Trace the deterioration of Tambu’s relationship with Nhamo.
2. What are the burdens of womanhood, according to Tambu’s mother?
Describe Tambu’s relationship with her father Jeremiah.
3. Why is Tambu’s grandmother’s “fairy tale” story of the family significant?
4. How do Tambu and the rest of the family react to Babamukuru, Maiguru,
Nyasha, and Chido, all newly returned from England, at the clan gathering
of chapter 3?
5. Why has Babamukuru determined that Nhamo, rather than Tambu, should
come live with him at the Umtali mission and continue his education at the
mission school? Why does Babamukuru decide Tambu should go to the
mission school after Nhamo dies?
6. How does Tambu’s mother Mainini react to her son’s death? On what or
whom does she blame his death?
7. What effect does Dangarembga’s untranslated Shona terms have on your
reading of the novel? Compare/contrast the opening chapters of
Dangarembga’s novel to Things Fall Apart. Consider especially the narrator
or narrative voices of the two novels: from whose perspective(s) are these
two stories told, and whose stories are being told in each novel?
"Sadza ne Nyama ('Sadza [and Meat Stew]') or simply Sadza is the staple diet for most of
Zimbabwe's indigenous peoples."
Mbira Pages: Shona Culture Resource Guide (Solomon Murungu & Zambuko
Projects, 2004)
http://www.zambuko.com/mbira.html
Ch. 4 (58-76) and Ch. 5 (pp. 77-102)
8. Describe Tambu’s responses and feelings when she first comes to live at
the mission and go to the mission school.
9. Compare the characters of Tambu and Nyasha as they are revealed to us
once the girls begin to share a room at the mission house. Describe the nature
and trace the development of their friendship. Why is Tambu both attracted
to and disapproving of her cousin? How do their attitudes toward
Babamukuru and Maiguru differ?
10. Describe the characters and relationship of Babamukuru and Maiguru at
home at the mission. Describe their relationships to their children Chido and
Nyasha. Consider Tambu’s first formal interview with Babamukuru in the
living room the evening of her arrival: what does it reveal about Tambu’s
relationship with Babamukuru, the head of the Sigauke family?
11. Why does Tambu feel she has undergone a “reincarnation” (p. 92) at the
mission? What are her successes in this new life? What transpires when she
begins to menstruate?
12. Why is Tambu so surprised to learn that Maiguru has earned a master’s
degree?
Ch. 6 (pp. 103-119)
13. Describe the categories of white people that Tambu observes at the
mission.
14. Why do all the black African children want to go to the multiracial
government schools, like the one where Chido attends? How did Chido get
into that school?
15. Why is Nyasha so “nervous” about passing her Form 2 examinations?
Why does she say she’d almost like to fail to see how her father would
respond?
16. Trace the significant moments of the scene at the Beit Hall Christmas
Party and its aftermath. Why do Nyasha and her father fight?
17. Why does Tambu say, “I was having to revise my thinking” (p. 116)?
18. Why does Nyasha seem to be “burning herself out” (p. 116)? Why does
Nyasha want to resist getting “‘comfortable and used to the way things
are’”(p. 117)? How has her early life in England shaped the way she is now?
Interpret Tambu’s characterization of Nyasha’s conflict as “self versus
surrender and the content of sin” (p. 118). What do you see as the inner
conflicts for Nyasha and Tambu? How does Tambu’s thinking differ from
Nyasha’s at this point?
19. In what way has Tambu saved Nyasha’s life (p. 119)? Why does Tambu
admire her cousin?
Ch. 7 (pp. 120-148)
20. What reasons do you think Chido, Nyasha, Tambu, and Maiguru might
have for not wanting to go to the homestead for Christmas holidays in
December 1969? What are Tambu’s reactions to her return home?
21. Describe the characters and situations of Lucia and Takesure. Why is
Babamukuru unhappy to see them at the homestead? What do we learn of
the past history of Lucia and her sister?
22. Consider the formal scene of greetings in Mainini’s room. What is
revealed by Mainini’s interactions with Nyasha, Tambudzai, Babamukuru,
and Maiguru? How does Lucia behave and why?
23. The rest of the Sigauke “patriarchy” comes to the homestead for the
Christmas holiday--though for Tambu it is no “holiday,” she says (p. 133):
why? What do the sleeping arrangements reveal about the family hierarchy?
What does the women’s work consist of?
24. Trace the important events of the parallel scenes of the dare of the family
patriarchy, and the females in the kitchen. Why are all but Tete Gladys
excluded from the dare? Why is mainini (Tambu’s mother) offended by
Maiguru’s detachment and why is she so bitter about Maiguru? Interpret
Tambu’s analysis of the women’s situation on p. 138. Interpret Nyasha’s later
judgment that both Mainini Ma’Shingayi and Maiguru were showing their
“suffering” p. 142).
25. What does Lucia do when she interrupts the Sigauke patriarchy’s dare?
The case being discussed is initially identified by Babamukuru as Takesure’s,
but Lucia and Jeremiah are drawn into the matter as parts of the family
problem to be solved. What various solutions are offered to the “problem” by
Tete Gladys, Takesure, Jeremiah? Why does Babamukuru object to his
brother Jeremiah’s solution, and what solution does Babamukuru propose
instead? Why does Babamukuru prevail?
26. How does Nyasha react to Tambu’s story of the outcome of the dare (pp.
147-148)? What does Tete Galdys conclude about the problem and the
solutions (p. 148)?
Ch. 8 (pp. 149-175)
27. Why does Tambu object to her uncle’s plan that her parents have a church
wedding? What are the sources of conflict for Tambu such that this business
of the wedding become a “complex problem” (p. 151) for her? How does
Tambu see herself in comparison to her cousin Nyasha? How does
Babamukuru see the two girls?
28. Why does Tambu think the men have underestimated Lucia? What does
Lucia do after the family dare? Why does Mainini have trouble making up
her mind (p. 153)? Why does Lucia come to the mission with her sister and
what is the outcome? How do Nyasha and Tambu differ in their appraisal of
Babamukuru getting Lucia a job?
29. Why does her parents’ impending wedding become a “bed of confusion”
(p. 165) for Tambu? What does she do the on the day of the wedding? What
is Babamukuru’s reaction? What has impelled Tambu to defy her uncle on
this matter of the wedding? What is her punishment?
30. Why does Maiguru fight with and then leave Babamukuru for 5 days?
How does Nyasah view her mother’s leaving? Why is Nyasha disappointed
when she learned where her mother has gone, and how does she react when
her mother returns home with her father?
Ch. 9 (pp. 176-190)
31. Why do the nuns come to the mission school? Why is Tambu offered a
place and a scholarship at the exclusive Sacred Heart convent school? Why
does Nyasha think Tambu should not go? What is the process of
“assimilation” she describes on p. 179? Why is Babamukuru also reluctant to
let her go? How does Maiguru manage to influence her husband’s decision to
let Tambu go to the convent school?
32. During Christmas vacation in December 1970, Maiguru refuses to go and
stay at the homestead: why? Why does Babamukuru decide to let Tambu go
to the convent school? What is Tambu’s mother’s reaction to the news? What
role does Lucia play in helping Tambu take another step toward what she
calls her “freedom”?
33. How does Tambu respond to others’ constant refrain that she not “forget”
(p. 188)? What might Tambu be in danger of forgetting and why? Why does
Tambu think she cannot “forget”?
34. Describe the state of Nyasha’s relationship with her father at the point
when Tambu leaves for the convent school.
Ch. 10 (pp. 191-204)
35. How does Tambu respond to Sacred Heart when she first arrives? How
does she view “my new life” (p. 191)? Why isn’t she missing Nyasha during
her first term?
36. Describe Nyasha’s letters to Tambu while she is away at school, especially
the “serious letter” (p. 196). Tambu sees little of Nyasha during her first term
break, but in what state does she find Nyasha at the August holiday?
Examine Nyasha’s break down (pp. 200-202): what do you think causes it?
How does Tambu’s mother account for Nyasha’s break down and many of
the other family problems she relates to “Englishness” (pp. 202-203)? What
“suspicion” enters Tambu’s mind on p. 203?
37. Tambu tells us “seeds do grow” p. 203: what does she mean? Why does
she no longer accept Sacred Heart as the “sunrise on my horizon”? Interpret
the narrator’s closing statements, pp. 203-204. Where do you suppose
Tambudzai is now and what might she be doing, at the time when she “set
down this story”? What do you imagine that “long and painful process” of
“expansion” over many years has meant to Tambudzai?
38. For what purpose(s) do you think Dangarembga has “appropriated”* the
white man’s education, language, and literary forms in writing this novel? In
what sense might you consider Nervous Conditions a female “response” to
African male novels like Things Fall Apart? How do you think Dangarembga
sees her role as an African storyteller?
39. Identify what you interpret to be major theme(s) of Nervous Conditions.
Does this title seem appropriate to you? Why or why not?
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Scholarly Articles
[need to be verified/updated, Aug. 2004 ~ CA]
"'Of Mimicry and Woman': Hysteria and AntiColonial Feminism in Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions," by Michelle Vizzard - SPAN:
Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and
Language Studies 36 (1993)
http://kali.murdoch.edu.au/~cntinuum/litserv/SPAN/36/Vizzard.html
Tsitsi Dangarembga: An Overview (still under construction as of 7/98,
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/post/zimbabwe/td/dangar
embgaov.html, being prepared as part of the Postimperial and Postcolonial
Literature in English project, Brown Univ.).
Try the project's Zimbabwe Overview for links to Zimbabwe's literature and
culture
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/post/zimbabwe/zimbabw
eov.html
Abstract of "Disembodying the Corpus: Postcolonial Pathology in Tsitsi
Dangarembga's 'Nervous Conditions,'" a scholarly article by Deepika
Bahri, from Postmodern Culture 5.1 (1994)
http://direct.press.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/abstracts/5.1abstracts
.html
...and a Response to Deepika Bahri's Essay, by Timothy Burke, Dept. of
English, Swarthmore College
from Infotrac 2000 Expanded Academic
ASAP:
Aegerter, Lindsay Pentolfe. "A Dialectic of Autonomy and Community:
Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions. (South African novel)(Forum:
After Empire II) Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 15.2(Fall
1996):231(10pp). Infotrac 2000 Expanded Academic ASAP, Article
A19155207: Abstract only available] Abstract: "Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi
Dangarembga's novel, 'Nervous Conditions,' presents African women
characters who, through action and dialogue, resist aspects of racism,
sexism, and oppression in their society while navigating their lives within the
margins of both traditional and Western colonial cultures. Two of the main
characters, Nyasha and Tambudzai represent the Western-educated, urban
African woman and the traditional, rural African woman respectively. While
both women actively work to change their destinies, they find strength and
wholeness in their cultural identity when they come together."
Hill, Janice E. "Purging a Plate Full of Colonial History: The 'Nervous
Conditions' of Silent Girls." (Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel)(Third World
Women's Inscriptions) College Literature 22.1(Feb 1995):78(13pp.)
Infotrac 2000 Expanded Academic ASAP, Article A16989112 [full text
available] Abstract: "Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel 'Nervous Conditions'
focuses on the alienation of Shona women from restrictive traditional
practices. Barred by custom from disagreeing verbally with their family, one
woman chooses to rebel by feigning paralysis while another refuses to eat
food. In both cases, the women express rebellion through the body.
Dangarembga's novel illustrates how the acquisition of education and the
adoption of Western ways can have painful consequences for modern African
women."
Full Text also available from EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Article
Number 9503290996.
Nair, Supriya, "Melancholic Women: The Intellectual Hysteric(s) in
Nervous Conditions." Research in African Literatures 26.2(Summer
1995):130(10pp). [Article A17156438: full text available] Abstract: "Ngugi
wa Thiong-o, in his book 'Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of
Language in African Literature,' condemns colonial education for alienating
African intellectuals from the people they are supposed to serve. Like many
African authors, Ngugi portrays males as the only ones capable of reacting
physically and psychologically to colonialism, while female reactions to
colonialism are often attributed to madness or other biological conditions.
However, in Tistsi Dangarembga's 'Nervous Conditions,' the female
protagonist uses colonial education to escape from her subordinate state and
to achieve her personal goals."
Full text also available from EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Article No.
9508225322.
Nnaemeka, Obioma. "From Orality to Writing: African Women Writers
and the (Re)Inscription of Womanhood." Research in African
Literatures, 25.4(Winter 1994):137(21pp). [Article A16026677: full text
available] Abstract: "African women writers are redefining womanhood and
reclaiming their position in the literary tradition. Women played a central role
in African oral tradition both as performers and subjects. Colonialism, with its
strong patriarchal leanings, established an educational order that privileged
men and women became objects. The emergence of writers such as Tsitsi
Dangarembga and Rebeka Njau will help to continue the struggle for
women."
Phillips, Maggi. "Engaging Dreams: Alternative Perspectives on Flora
Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, Bessie Head, and Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Writing." (Cluster on South African Writing) Research in
African Literatures 25.4(Winter 1994): 89(15pp). [Article A16026671: full
text available] Abstract: "The writings of Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta,
Ama Ata Aidoo, Bessie Head and Tsitsi Dangarembga, which have frequently
been interpreted in the context of the authors' race and gender, offer
interesting perspectives on reality through use of dreams and dreaming.
Critics who focus on the socio-political aspects of their works miss the
layered perceptions of reality. Dreams become tools for reinterpreting history
and reality, for restoring spiritual vision and for reconstructing cultural
identity."
Saliba, Therese. "On the Bodies of Third World Women: Cultural
Impurity, Prostitution, and Other Nervous Conditions." (Third World
Women's Inscriptions) College Literature 22.1(Feb 1995): 131(16pp).
[Article A16989134: full text available] Abstract: "The novel 'Woman at Point
Zero' by Egyptian writer Nawal El Saadawi and the novel 'Nervous
Conditions' by Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga provide examples of
Third World women's narratives that expose the problems faced by
postcolonial women as they ponder the realities of the class systems in their
countries. Both books succeed in vividly dramatizing the issues of gender
and class oppression through the stories of their protagonists."
Full text also available from EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Article No.
9503291007.
Uwakweh, Pauline Ada. "Debunking Patriarchy: The Liberational Quality
of Voicing in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." (New Voices in
African Literature) Research in African Literatures 26.1(Spring 1995):
75(10pp). [Article A16556791: full text available] Abstract: "Tsitsi
Dangarembga's 'Nervous Conditions' is praiseworthy because it belongs to a
special category of women's writing that is consciously challenging the male
hegemony in Zimbabwean society. Dangarembga takes up issues such as
female subordination and its intersection with colonialization. Dangarembga's
use of the autobiographical mode makes her work self-referential and the
novel that argues for voice for all women becomes her way of establishing
her voice in the male-dominated Zimbabwean literary circle."
Full text also available from EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Article No.
9503022587.
Additional Sources
Aegerter, Lindasy Pentolf. "A Dialectic of Autonomy and Community: Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature
15.2 (Fall 1996): 231 (10pp). EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite Article No.
9705185073.
Abstract: "Comments on the dialectic of autonomy and community from the
book `Nervous Conditions,' by Tsitsi Dangarembga. South African women's
resistance to social silencing and political disenfranchisement; Oppression
according to race, class, gender and culture; Restoration of centrality in
culture and self-definition; Description of an African woman."
Aidoo, Ama Ata. "To Be an African Woman Writer--an Overview and a
Detail." Criticism and Ideology. Ed. Kirsten Holst Petersen. Uppsala:
Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1988. 155-72.
Amadiume, Ifi. Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an
African Society. London: Zed, 1987.
Andrade, Susan Z. "Rewriting History, Motherhood and Rebellion: Naming an
African Woman's Literary Tradition." Research in African Literatures 21.1
(1990): 91-109.
Bartolph, Jacqueline. "'The Tears of Childhood' of Tsitsi Dangarembga."
Commonwealth Essays and Studies 13.1 (1990): 37-47.
Bosman, Brenda. "A Correspondence with Theory: Tsitsi Dangarembga's
Nervous Conditions." Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
2.1(1990): 91-100.
Bourdillon, Michael. The Shona People. Zimbabwe: Mambo, 1987.
Brown, Lloyd. Women Writers in Black Africa. Westport, CT: Greenwood,
1981.
Bruner, Charlotte H. "World Literature in Review: Zimbabwe." Rev. of
Nervous Conditions, by Tsitsi Dangarembga. World Literature Today 64.2
(Spring 1990): 353 (2pp). Full text available from EBSCOHost Academic
Search Elite, Article No. 9610220731.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. Seattle, WA: The Seal P, 1989.
Davies, Carole Boyce, and Anne Adams Graves. eds. Ngambika: Studies of
Women in African Literature. Trenton: African World P, 1986.
E.E. Rev. of Everyone's Child [Motion Picture], dir. by Tsitsi Dangarembga.
New Internationalist June 1997: 33. EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite
Article No. 9707071582.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann.
New York: Grove, 1967.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington.
Middlesex: Penguin, 1967.
Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Literature in Africa. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970.
Frank, Katherine. "Feminist Criticism and the African Novel." African
Literature Today 14 (1984): 34-48.
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Zimbabwe: Mambo, 1973.
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War and Political Change on White Rhodesia, c. 1970-1980. New York:
Oxford UP, 1993.
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World: Comparative Perspectives. Albany: State U of New York P, 1982.
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McWilliams, Sally. "Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions: At the
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Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and
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(10pp). EBSCOHost Academic Search Elite, Article No. 9508225322.
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Thomas, Sue. "Killing the Hysteric in the Colonized's House: Tsitsi
Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." The Journal of Commonwealth
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Uwakweh, Pauline Ada. "Debunking Patriarchy: The Liberational Quality of
Voicing in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions." Research in African
Literatures 26.1 (Spring 1995): 75 (10pp). EBSCOHost Academic Search
Elite, Article Number 9503022587. Abstract: "Focuses on the literary
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circumvent prejudice toward women's writings in Zimbabwe. Use of selfreferential nature of autobiographies; Interpretation of experiences of a
female in a patriarchal and colonial society."
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Related Links
Mbira Pages: Shona Culture Resource Guide.
Solomon Murungu & Zambuko Projects, 2004. 21 August 2004
<http://www.zambuko.com/mbira.html>.
Zimbabwe Area Studies: AFRICAN STUDIES, maintained
by Joseph Caruso, African Studies Librarian, Columbia Univ.
2001. Aug. 21 2004
<http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl
/Zimbabwe.html>.
[Rest of links need to be verified/updated, ~ CA]
Zimbabwe Page (African Studies WWW, Univ. of Penn.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Country_Specific/
Zimbabwe.html ), including links to this large CIA map of
Zimbabwe.
ZimWEB, online magazine from Harare, Zimbabwe (1998),
updated monthly, includes a brief article on Zimbabwean
Women in Politics by Margaret Dongo, and maintains the
Zimbabwe Homepage (ZimWEB 1996), with links to
information on the country, its population, history
(illustrated!), religion, education, culture, and more . . . .
Sample Zimbabwean proverbs or the elders' Wisdom of
the Ages.
Mbira Pages: Shona Culture Resource Guide.
Solomon Murungu & Zambuko Projects, 2004. 21
August 2004
<http://www.zambuko.com/mbira.html>.
See also links to essays and a general map for Traditional
African Religions (prepared by Chidi Denis Isizoh,
http://users.iol.it/cdi/ATR_countries.htm ), as well as an
extensive Bibliography and Friendly Webpages of related
links.
Dandemutande: Zimbabwean Music & Culture Worldwide
http://www.dandemutande.com/
For more sites, click the Dandemutande Resource Guide
Web Sites.
Shona Art from Zimbabwe a virtual gallery from IMBA,
Perth, Western Australia
(http://www.chartersart.net.au/imba/index.html )
Talking Stones V - A major Exhibition of sculptor Gideon
Nyanhongo, from the Contemporary Fine Art Gallery at Eton
(Windsor, Berkshire UK, http://www.cfag.co.uk/index.htm
"Stone Sculpture in Zimbabwe," an essay by Celia WinterIrving (Honorary Research Fellow and consultant on
Southern African Art at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe,
http://www.cfag.co.uk/zimba.htm .
Recommended by Aaron Page (May 05, 1998): "If anyone is
interested in seeing a picture of a Shona village, you can by
going to
www.azania.co.za/zimbabwe/great_zimbabwe/Shona_Villag
e1.htm. To do the same for Ndebele architecture, try
www.africanfocus.co.za/village/ndebele/archi.htm.
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help
"This Englishness Will Kill You":
Colonial[ist] Education and Female
Socialization in Merle Hodge's Crick
Crack, Monkey, and Bessie Head's
Maru
Journal article by Ketu H. Katrak; College
Literature, Vol. 22, 1995
Journal Article Excerpt
See below...
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"This Englishness Will Kill You": Colonial[ist] Education and Female
Socialization in Merle Hodge's Crick Crack, Monkey, and Bessie Head's
Maru
KETU H. KATRAK
Katrak is
professor of
English at the
University of
Massachusetts,
Amherst.
She has
published
widely
in African and
third-world
literature, and
is author of
Wole Soyinka
and
Modern
Tragedy
(Greenwood
1986 ).
I am convinced that they have other reasons
for disapproving of me. They do not like my
language, my English, because it is authentic
and my Shona, because it is not! They think
that I am a snob, that I think I am superior to
them because I do not feel that I am inferior
to men . . . I very much would like to belong,
Tambu, but I find I do not. (Dangarembga)
Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent . . . of indoctrinating them to
adapt to the world of oppression . . . The
unfinished character of men and the transformational character of reality necessitate that
education be an ongoing activity. (Freire)
British colonial aggression consolidated itself
with the chalk and the blackboard. Issues
of cultural domination, the role that
"English Literature" played in a liberal colonial
enterprise are recent areas of study that provide
significant clues to current neocolonial realities. 1
A study of the ideological underpinnings of colonial(ist) educational systems in former colonies in
-62Africa, the Caribbean, and India reveals their lasting effects. Colonized peoples'
mental colonizations. through English language education, British values, and cul
ture result in states of exclusion and alienation. Such alienations are experienced
in conditions of mental exile within one's own culture to which, given one's edu
cation, one un-belongs, or in physical displacements evident in large expatriate
populations of previously colonized peoples in the "west."
Although writers like Ngugi wa Thiong'o and others have discussed the den
igration of indigenous cultures by an English educational system, they deal main
ly with issues of racial superiority and inferiority: "The colonial system" remarks
Ngugi, "produced the kind of education which nurtured subservience, self-hatred,
and mutual suspicion . . . Society was a racial pyramid: the European minority at
the top, the Asian in the middle, and the African forming the base. The educa
tional system reflected this inequality" (Homecoming 14). To such discussions,
postcolonial 2 women writers add the crucial component of gender, and how a
gendered educational system placed women in complex, sometimes worse posi
tions than in pre-colonial times in relationship to their own communities.
Education was devised to create a civil servant class, predominantly male, that
would aid a colonial administration. This same class would continue to work for
the colonizers' benefit even after their physical departure (Fanon's "black skin
white mask" phenomenon). 3
For this study, I use critical practices that theorize from within postcolonial
women's texts, that allow the texts themselves to lead a literary, critical enterprise
into an interdisciplinary approach that includes colonial history, education theory,
political analysis, and "critiques of imperialism in its cultural forms" as Edward
Said puts it (11). Such a method recognizes the distinctions of fields and avoids
totalizations. It attempts to recognize the multiple and intertwined systems of
power that buttressed a colonial and a postcolonial machinery. A recognition that
in this context power is overdetermined would also open up possibilities of resis
tance. This method is an interplay between actual power relations--racial, sexu
al, class--and their theorizing and interpretation. Such a critical endeavor aims to
be allied with progressive struggles for social change. As Merle Hodge remarks in
her essay, "Challenges of the Struggle for Sovereignty: Changing the World versus
Writing Stories," for her,
there is no fundamental contradiction between art and activism. In particular, the
power of the creative word to change the world is not to be underestimated. . .
. We are occupied by foreign fiction. Fiction which affirms and validates our
world is therefore an important weapon of resistance. (202, 206)
In this essay, I undertake a cross-cultural study of the impacts of Engish edu
cation on the female protagonists, Tee in Trinidadian Merle Hodge's Crick Crack,
Monkey, and Margaret in Botswanan/South African Bessie Head's Maru. I analyze
the role of English education in female socialization, namely how the study of
English language and culture as imposed by colonial education alienates women
from their indigenous cultural and linguistic frameworks. My comparative study
avoids reductionism by acknowledging specificities of cultures, and of different