Global Reading Challenge: NERVOUS CONDITIONS by Tsitsi Dangarembga

ISBN: 9780954702335 [UK]

Continent: Africa

Country: Zimbabwe

Title: Nervous Condtions

Author: Tsitsi Dangarembga

First published in: 1988

"The victimisation, I saw, was universal. It didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition... Men took it everywhere with them" (p. 118).

Nervous Conditions is the story of Tambudzai, a young Shona girl trapped in an impoverished life in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1960s. When Tambu's older brother dies, she gains the opportunity to study at the Mission school, where her rich, educated uncle is the principal.

Used to toiling in the fields all day, sleeping in the smoky kitchen at night with her mother and sisters, and being two years behind in school because her family cannot always afford the fees, Tambu feels that all her dreams have come true when Babamukuru whisks her away to his clean, whitewashed house at the Mission. But once she arrives, she realizes that even in her uncle's world of affluence and education, all is not well. Her cousin Nyasha, Anglicized from the years she lived in England while her parents pursued graduate degrees there, does not fit in with the Shona ideal of decent femininity. She speaks her mind, stands up to Babamukuru, and openly questions the traditions of her people—especially those that enforce female subjugation. Nyasha's mother Maiguru, on the other hand, is passive and demure, in spite of her intelligence and high level of education. The strain between the two cultures—British and Shona—is beginning to break the family apart.

Nervous Conditions is an introspective novel; Tambu quietly observes the interactions of the other characters, trying to define herself in relation to them and in relation to her society. Key themes are the struggle for female autonomy in the face of a strict patriarchal society, and the clash of traditional African and Western cultures ("It's the Englishness," Tambu's mother tells her, bitterly, "It'll kill them all if they aren't careful" (p. 207)).

I liked this novel because it showed me a world and a way of life of which I had been completely ignorant. I went into it knowing nothing about the Shona people, and by the time I finished the novel I felt I had really learned something about their culture. Tambu neither condemns nor endorses either culture—that of the Shona or that of the British colonists. Instead she describes the strengths and flaws in both, noting with sadness that the differences between them are slowly tearing Nyasha and her family apart.

I enjoyed watching Tambu's understanding of herself and her family expand over the course of the novel, and I look forward to reading the sequel, The Book of Not, as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.

If issues such as gender identity, female empowerment, colonialism, education, race relations, and the struggle against poverty interest you; if you enjoy psychological, introspective novels; or if you just want to learn more about the cultural heritage of Zimbabwe, you want to read this book.

4.5/5