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Biography
In 1959, Tsitsi Dangarembga was born on the African continent in what was formerly referred to as Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, in the town of Mutoko. Although born in Africa she spent her childhood , ages two through six, in Britain. She began her education in a British school but after returning to Rhodesia with her family, she concluded her early education, her A-levels, in a missionary school in the City of Mutare. Later, she went back to Britain to attend Cambridge University where she pursued a course of study in medicine. Dangarembga was not destined to stay in Britain; after becoming homesick and alienated she returned to her homeland of Rhodesia in 1980 just before it became Zimbabwe under black-majority rule.
Although she returned to Rhodesia she still continued her educational pursuits. She began a course of study at the University of Harare in psychology. During her studies, Dangarembga held a job at a marketing agency as a copywriter for two years and was a member of the drama group affiliated with the university. This is where her early writing was given an avenue for expression. She wrote many of the plays that were put into production at the university. In 1983 she directed and wrote a play entitled "The Lost of the Soil". She then became an active member of a theater group called, Zambuko. This group was directed by Robert McLaren. While involved in this groups she participated in the production of two plays, "Katshaa!" and "Mavambo".
While involved in theater she also explored porse writing. In 1985, she published a short story in Sweden entitled "The Letter" and in 1987, she published a play in Harare entitled "She No Longer Weeps". Her real success came at age twenty five with the publication of her novel Nervous Conditions. This novel was the first novel to be published in English by a black Zimbabwean woman. In 1989, this novel won her the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Prior to this award she had won a second prize in the Swedish aid-organization, SIDA, short story competition. After Nervous Conditions was published in Denmark, she made a trip there in 1991 to be part of the Images-of-Africa festival. Dangaremba continued her education in Berlin at the Deutsche Film und Fernseh Akademie where she studied film direction. While in school she made many film productions, including a documentary for German television. She then made the film entitled "Everyone's Child", her most recent credit. It has been shown worldwide at various festivals including the Dublin Film Festival.
Nervous Conditions
"The condition of native is a nervous condition."
Nervous Conditions is a partially autobiographical story of Tambu, a young girl who lives on an impoverished Rhodesian farm during the late 1960's. The death of Tambu's brother forces her to live with Babamukuru, her uncle who has been educated in the west, and become the provider for her family. She quickly accepts this situation because it offers her the opportunity of missionary schooling and the knowledge of a western educated family. Tambu has great aspirations for her personal education despite the obstacles that stand in her way: race, class and sex. The topics of education and its relation to gender are important facets of this novel. Education is used as a type of power by many characters in the novel, most importantly Babamukuru. The novel also follows the story of Tambu's cousin who has anorexia, an illness not usually associated with African countries. This disease is used in the novel as a form of control for Tambu's cousin who is torn between two cultures, that of her home, Rhodesia and that of England. The story also discusses the many facets of poverty and the effects that it has on people. Poverty effects each character in the novel creating in each of them a type of nervous condition.
Selected Bibliography
Buck, Claire (1992) The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature, New York : Prentice Hall General Reference, pp. 247.
Creamer, Heidi (1994) "An Apple for the Teacher? : Femininity, Coloniality and Food in Nervous Conditions", in Anna Rutherford, ed. Into the Nineties. Dangaroo Press : New South Wales, Australia, 344-360.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi (1989) Nervous Conditions, Seattle, Washington : Seal Press.
Vizzard, Michelle. "Of Mimicry and Woman' Hysteria and Anti colonial Feminism in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions", Online. Internet. 1993 Journal of the South Pacific Association for the Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. Available: http://humpc61.murdoch.edu.au/cntinuum/litserv/SPAN/36/Vizzard.html
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Author: Rebecca Grady, Fall 1997
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