Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Published in 1988, Nervous Conditions is Tsitsi Dangarembga's first novel, and it is by any measure a very fine first novel. In fact, it wears the laurel and the burden of being the first novel in English by a woman from Zimbabwe. In addition to beautiful descriptions of the setting, the characters are drawn with bold yet nuanced strokes, and then set in rotating contrasts to each other. The narrator Tambu is contrasted with her slightly older brother Nhamo, and, when he dies, takes his place as the family's hope at the mission school. Tambu is then contrasted with her cousin Nyasha, who has just returned from England with her parents. Tambu is bent on obedience, education, and self-improvement, but Nyasha kept distracting her with larger questions. Tambu's father may be compared to Nyasha's father, only to make clear the apparent gulf between them. The former is lazy and weak whereas the latter was strong and authoritarian. Tambu's mother is also contrasted wi...

The weekend was spent read Frantz Fanon. Yes, I'm late for the party. Black Skin, White Masks (1952) A penetrating study of colonized Martinique society and the colonized young man who thought of himself as French, only to go to the metropole of France and realized that he was black. A daring attempt to synthesize psycho- and social analyses. A Dying Colonialism (1959) or The Fifth Year of the Algerian Revolution Fanon's account of the Algerian War of independence. In the war the women learned to instrumentalize their veils as revolutionary soldiers and agents. Fanon shows why the rural Algerians first rejected the radio because it was perceived as the voice of the enemy, the colonial authorities and culture, and later embraced it when it broadcast the Voice of the revolution. In like manner Fanon argued for why Algerians first rejected and then embraced Western medicine. (After reading this chapter, I understand better now my own position on female circumcision.) In th...