Nervous Conditions
Tsitsi Dangarembga
A girl bargains for an education against poverty and patriarchy.
Narrated by Tambu, a girl in colonial Rhodesia who seizes on schooling as escape from rural poverty and patriarchy, it sets her ambition against her Anglicised cousin Nyasha's anorexic rebellion. Taking its title from Fanon, it linked the wounds of colonialism to those of gender. Widely cited as the first English novel by a Black Zimbabwean woman, it became a cornerstone of African feminist literary study.
- Author
- Tsitsi Dangarembga
- First published
- 1988
- Genre
- Novel
- Theme
- East, Southern and North African Literature
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