Survival, Resistance, and Healing in Tsitsi Dangarembga Nervous Conditions

Tsitsi Dangarembga is a Zimbabwean novelist who made a mark in the literary space with her debut novel titled Nervous Conditions (1988). The novel captures the destructive impacts of colonization on the Africans particularly Zimbabwe, and emphasizes the struggles encountered by female characters that stem from gender oppression in their community. Nervous Conditions foregrounds women’s survival and resistance as complex, multifaceted processes, and emphasizes that healing, while often incomplete, is crucial in the pursuit of autonomy and self-expression. It demonstrates that the tension between modern and tradition accounts for the negative representation of women and oppression. Focusing on the themes of race, class, and gender through the eyes of Tambu, Dangarembga treats such concerns as education related to gender, the impact of a colonial education on a vulnerable, impressionable young African girl—and how women in colonial Rhodesia suffered a double oppression: from the race-based imperialism of the British and from the patriarchal system of the Shona community. After her elder brother's sudden death, Tambu unapologetically seizes the educational opportunity to do some good for the family, and she is subsequently transfigured from a lowly peasant girl into a student at a prestigious multiracial convent. Her path to emancipated self-discovery is filled with crises, and tribulations, symbolic of the injustices done to women. Tambu survives the trials and traumas, and culmination of her protest occurs when Babamukuru forces upon her own parents a belated Christian wedding, an action that questions her own legitimacy and denying of traditional African customs.