As Tambu goes on to live with Babamukuru, many other secrets and true colours of Babamukuru is revealed. It is not what seemed like from a distance and the lives of Maiguru and Nyasha were not what it should have been like. This book introduces us to many numerous struggles that women experience. This journey of Tambu helps us view society from a different perspective and the fact that everything is achievable is what is portrayed throught this marvellous work by Tsitsi Dangarembga. Preview — Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga.
A modern classic in the African literary canon and voted in the Top Ten Africa's Best Books of the 20th Century, this novel brings to the politics of decolonization theory the energy of women's rights.
An extraordinarily well-crafted work, this book is a work of vision. Through its deft negotiation of race, class, gender and cultural change, it dramatizes the 'nervousn A modern classic in the African literary canon and voted in the Top Ten Africa's Best Books of the 20th Century, this novel brings to the politics of decolonization theory the energy of women's rights.
Through its deft negotiation of race, class, gender and cultural change, it dramatizes the 'nervousness' of the 'postcolonial' conditions that bedevil us still. In Tambu and the women of her family, we African women see ourselves, whether at home or displaced, doing daily battle with our changing world with a mixture of tenacity, bewilderment and grace. Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. More Details Original Title. Nervous Conditions 1. Rhodesia Zimbabwe Zimbabwe.
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Can anyone recommend other boarding school stories set or written by authors outside of Europe and the US? Girls' boarding school. See all 4 questions about Nervous Conditions…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4.
Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Nervous Conditions. Apr 20, Adina rated it really liked it Shelves: zimbabwe , w-mwl-alternative. I am long due with a review for this novel but I do not think I can write anything relevant.
I read Nervous Conditions while suffering from a bad reading slump and, to be honest, I struggled through it. The tone settled down though.
It is a classic of African literature and it deserves to be read. I am sorry I could not do this book justice. View 2 comments. Last year I discovered the writing of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Writing contemporary accounts of Nigerians in both Africa and in the United States and England, Adichie has becoming a leading African feminist voice.
Before Adichie, thirty years ago Tsitsi Dangarembga attempted to assert rights for African women in both her writing and film making. Needing an African classic for my classics bingo this year, I decided upon Dangarembga's debut autobiographical novel, Nervous Conditions, which is inf Last year I discovered the writing of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Needing an African classic for my classics bingo this year, I decided upon Dangarembga's debut autobiographical novel, Nervous Conditions, which is influential enough to be included in the book Great Books by Women by Erica Baumeister.
Reading through the books in this anthology is a personal ongoing challenge of mine, so I was happy to immerse myself in Dangarembga's work. From Zimbabwe and educated in Germany, Dangarembga wanted to expose her children to Africa and returned as an adult. She bases the story in this novel on her own upbringing and it is evident from the opening pages.
Readers meet Tambudzai, a precocious rural African girl who has no future other than living on a Rhodesian homestead with her family until she marries. Her uncle Babamukara decided his future at age nine when he started school and reached the top of class. Later on a scholarship, he attended secondary school and university in South Africa and later England. His wife Maiguru has been equally educated, and through their education, the couple become the headmaster and head mistress at a prestigious missionary school in central Rhodesia.
It is through this education that Babamukara attempts to uplift his entire family so that they are viewed as the most prestigious members or Rhodesian society. It is in this regard that he sponsors the education of Tambudzai's brother Nhambo. As the eldest sibling and only boy, the future hinges on Nhambo to use education to uplift his family away from their primitive conditions.
Like Babamukara's children Nyasha and Chido who have been educated in England and at the missionary school for their entire lives, Nhambo develops a sense of arrogance towards his family, especially toward his younger sisters reminding them that they are girls and that the homestead is their future.
Then, through Tambudzai's narration, Dambarembga writes of the opportunity that Tambudzai gains. At age fourteen, tragedy strikes: at the mission, Nhambo develops the mumps and dies in mere days. The mother is beside herself even though is less developed societies the death of one's children is commonplace. Babamukara decides to sponsor Tambudzai's education because he feels that the family still needs someone to lift it out of poverty.
As a result, Tambu moves into her uncle and aunt's care, away from the homestead and poverty, and into a luxurious life. As in many coming of age books, Nervous Conditions is not without conflict.
Tambudzai is taken under Nyasha's wing and views firsthand how life in England has made her arrogant and vows not to repeat this behavior. Babamukara praises Tambudzai as a model child and wishes that his own daughter would follow in suit.
Nyasha, unfortunately, by the time she reaches puberty is more English than African and some of her disdain for primitive Africa has rubbed off on Tambudzai. While Tambudzai still loves her family and wishes her sisters the best, she finds it harder and harder to return to the homestead with each passing vacation. There is no electricity or plumbing or books and life on the Rhodesian plane has become tougher to face. Tambudzai finds faults in both of her parents and wish that they would adhere to her uncle's example of using education as a means of bettering oneself in society.
Yet, her father is the laziest member in his family, and her mother having had no education and married since age fifteen have no future ahead of them. Tambudzai does not forget the upbringing that she came from, but on her later visits home she vows to achieve as much education as possible for a female from her era in order to lift her family out of its primitive conditions once and for all.
In the past few years I have not enjoyed coming of age books. I find as the protagonists are the age of my children that I suffer from a generation gap in my reading. During the last few months, I have read quality coming of age fiction, offering me hope for the genre moving forward. Tsitsi Dangarembga is an example of how education has lifted her out of poverty. Primitive lifestyles and few rights for women are still issues facing Africans today, so when Nervous Conditions was first published in , the work was considered groundbreaking.
Dangarembga has paved the way so that authors like Adichie have a platform today, and for that I feel privileged to have had read her work. In recent years, she has written two follow up novels so readers see where education has taken Tambudzai, and I look forward to following her on her journey through life. View all 14 comments. Apr 01, Sean Barrs rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Feminists.
Shelves: 4-star-reads , contemporary-lit , postcolonial. Identity is a powerful concept. But how does one establish such a thing?
Conventionally it develops from childhood due to an association with home and place. But what happens if your home is changing? What nationality do you become? These are the question Tambu has to ask herself. She initially believes that her ticket to self-improvement is through education.
She learns to speak English, and eventually she looks back on her origins with an air of indifference and woe. Not as much as her brother did, but to a degree that considers them underdeveloped and primitive. She has opportunities afforded to few, but is this a good thing if she comes to scorn her origins?
She can no longer fit in with her kin at the village; her intellect has gone beyond that. She is too white to be black, and to black to be white. It, in essence, leaves the black man wearing a white mask. As well as being a black person, Tambu is also a woman in an incredibly misogynistic society. She has to deal with the dominating nature of the patriarchal culture, and the oppression associated with it. So, life for Tambu is rather shit because everyone treats her like shit.
Stay at home with your mother. Learn to cook and clean. Grow vegetables. What the author is trying to portray, in a persuasive and compelling manner, is the voice of the colonised female, the voice of her ancestors and the effects on the everyday life of one living in postcolonial Africa.
In this, Tambu has a chance to prove her worth in such a male dominated society. By the end she develops the will to speak out and stand up for what she believes in. View all 4 comments. It was a long process for me, that process of expansion. The painful process of expansion which made Tambu's story possible was blocked for many years - blocked by the patriarchal system wh "Quietly, unobtrusively and extremely fitfully, something in my mind began to assert itself, to question things and refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this time when I can set down this story.
The painful process of expansion which made Tambu's story possible was blocked for many years - blocked by the patriarchal system which provided education for men and exploited women's physical labour at home. When her brother dies, Tambu is allowed - reluctantly - to take his place. Brainwashed to believe in her own inferiority, she enters the world of education at her godlike, patriarchal uncle's mission school, and she defers to his charismatic omnipotent rule.
But as she gets closer to her cousin Nyasha, she realises that there are other ways to perceive the world, once you have a comparison and a choice. And she sees the power of women underneath the rule of ridiculously pompous men. And recognising one's own strength is the first step to shake off injustice: "The victimisation, I saw, was universal. It didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition.
It didn't depend on any of the things I had thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them. Femaleness as opposed to and inferior to maleness. It goes beyond the question of race and colonialism and Christian versus tribe rites. You find it in highly educated, modern and over-privileged families in liberal democracies.
As a woman, you are barely human. And you have to learn to play your cards well to survive in a society designed for and by men. You have to know which fights to pick, and which ones to drop for your own safety. Tambu and Nyasha learn to navigate the dominance of maleness and whiteness while they grow up side by side, but it is not without major sacrifices.
Tambu has to let go of her broken mother, and force her own way in order to make a change for herself. Nyasha, a hybrid schooled in England, fights for her right to be an equal to men, and almost dies in the process, while taking out the punishment on herself as she develops bulimia and anorexia - only to be told by a white psychiatrist that Africans don't have that kind of illness.
The two girls support each other, with the help of their female relatives, and encourage each other to stay on the path of searching for their own identity, rather than to assimilate with Christian or tribal oppression.
In the most difficult times, education is not only a means to reach independence, but also a soothing medicine for repeatedly broken hearts and wills: "Most importantly, most wonderfully, there was the library, big, bright, walled in glass It is as powerful as Things Fall Apart , but it adds the experience of the hidden world of women.
An inspiration on so many levels, I strongly recommend it to the world of today! View all 10 comments. This book is now widely taught as a modern African classic, so I was interested in reading it to improve my understanding of the third part of the trilogy This Mournable Body , which has been shortlisted for this year's Booker prize. This book covers its narrator Tambu's childhood and teenage years in the Rhodesia of the s. The opening line "I was not sorry when my brother died" is a striking one, and the book gives the context in which it makes sense.
Tambu grows up in a small village where he This book is now widely taught as a modern African classic, so I was interested in reading it to improve my understanding of the third part of the trilogy This Mournable Body , which has been shortlisted for this year's Booker prize. Tambu grows up in a small village where her father just about earns a living growing maize. Her uncle is the headmaster of a mission school in the city of Umtali, and has a postgraduate degree from a British university.
Her elder brother attends the mission school, but the family does not believe in educating girls. Tambu has to fight to get any education, and when the brother dies she gets the chance to attend her uncle's school and stay in his house, where she shares a room with her very different and free-spirited cousin Nyasha, who has spent time in Britain and refuses to accept her family's limited expectations.
Eventually she gains a scholarship to a largely white Catholic school. The book is an artful construction which shows a wide range of experiences of ordinary black women in white Rhodesia. Tambu's story is a moving one, and I can see why this book is regarded as a classic. Quietly, unobtrusively and extremely fitfully, something in my mind began to assert itself, to question things and refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this time when I can set down this story.
It was a long and painful process for me, that process of expansion. It was a process whose events stretched over many years and would fill another volume, but the story I have told here, is my own story, the story of four women whom I loved, and our men, this story is how it all began. Such an int Quietly, unobtrusively and extremely fitfully, something in my mind began to assert itself, to question things and refuse to be brainwashed, bringing me to this time when I can set down this story.
Such an intelligent and subtle novel which is informed by theory postcolonial, gender, identity but which never feels like the theoretical foundations have been shoehorned in. In some ways this is a riff on the classic female coming-of-age story with some of the milestones feeling familiar first periods, disillusionment with paternal figures, leaving home but at the same time, Dangarembga shifts the goalposts and makes this uniquely her own.
The Rhodesian background is muted though the noting of key dates such as at the start invite us to research the troubled history of the country which inflects this story and certainly the psyches of the characters. Gender and patriarchal oppressions are more overt not least in the various rebellions of the narrator, Tambu, and her cousin, Nyasha.
Both girls are markedly affected by the internal toxicity of the outer tensions which seek to pressure them into good templates of 'well-behaved' women, partly - though not solely - associated with the Protestant Mission for which Tambu's uncle works. With the combined effects of race, religion and gender ranged against these girls, with the pressures coming from their families including disappointed and complicit female relatives, it's no big surprise that we finally end in a psychiatrist's office.
Along the way, though, there are scenes of broad comedy as well as violence and joy. This is written vividly and in Tambu we have a voice which is both innocent and knowing as it ranges from then to now, bitter, resistant, and ambitious as she strives to find her self identity amidst all the competing narratives trying to shape her. This book presents an interesting and intelligent depiction of life in Zimbabwe Rhodesia at the time. I was entertained throughout and felt immersed in the story and culture.
The issues that are raised in the novel around gender and identity are powerful and important. Even heroes like This book presents an interesting and intelligent depiction of life in Zimbabwe Rhodesia at the time.
Even heroes like Babamukuru did it. And that was the problem. Femaleness as opposed and inferior to maleness View 1 comment. Sep 13, Paul rated it it was amazing Shelves: reading-women-bingo , african-novels.
This was voted as one of the best African books of the twentieth century. Written in the late s, it is set in what was then Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe in the s and s. It is actually the first of a trilogy; the third part of which has just been published this year This Mournable Body, it has been longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Dangarembga has also just been arrested for protesting against corruption in Zimbabwe. This novel is partly autobiographical. The title is taken from Sa This was voted as one of the best African books of the twentieth century. Colonialism, poverty and gender are the key themes in the novel. The main protagonist is a young girl called Tambu. She only gets to go to school because her older brother has died.
As the male child he was the one to be educated. Tambu leaves her own home and parents to live with her uncle Babamukuru and his family at a mission station where she goes to school. Her relationship with her cousin Nyasha is central in showing a different set of issues relating to gender and oppression.
Men and women have their place and the novel focusses on the different reactions of the various female characters. The clash of cultures particularly affects Nyasha. Femaleness as opposed and inferior to maleness. What will help you, my child, is to learn to carry your burdens with strength. I had an idea that this would happen as I passed through the school gates, those gates that would declare me a young lady, a member of the Young Ladies College of the Sacred Heart. I was impatient to get to those gates.
The suspicion remained for a few days, during which time it transformed itself into guilt, and then I had nightmares. They did it to them too.
They put him through it all. Then she was whispering again. The real villains are colonialism and patriarchy. Aug 18, Sidharth Vardhan rated it it was amazing Shelves: 1-africa , list , list-african It uses the old method popular among novelists of highlighting the prevalent social injustice and conditions through a shocking event - you know how Medea's killing her children reflected on patriarchy of her time, when 'Beloved's heroine kills her child it reflected on slavery.
Camus' Outsider's narrator failed to feel any grief for his mother's loss - reflecting the way how people are unable to feel a sense of belonging to our surroundings and so on, Before I had read Phaedra I thought her inc It uses the old method popular among novelists of highlighting the prevalent social injustice and conditions through a shocking event - you know how Medea's killing her children reflected on patriarchy of her time, when 'Beloved's heroine kills her child it reflected on slavery.
Camus' Outsider's narrator failed to feel any grief for his mother's loss - reflecting the way how people are unable to feel a sense of belonging to our surroundings and so on, Before I had read Phaedra I thought her incestual intentions reflected on the unjust assumption where a woman expected to remain happily married to a man twice her age and take a man her own age as her stepson.
Here the event disclosed in the very first sentence is narrator's then a little girl inability to feel any remorse on the accidental death of her brother and reflects on unequal treatment of girl and boy child. One of the first African feminist novels - what at first seems like a coming of age novel of a girl in Zimbawe expands to contain stories of other women around her. At one point, the narrator points how the women are unable to react to a situation as they wish to and feel morally obliged to because the identity that the society and culture have imposed on them and which they have come to completely identify themselves with expects them to stay silent.
It is unfortunate indeed to think of families where only one child would be able to get the education - but to resist a better life style choice just because it seems western culture To be honest, I'm not a big fan of those words - 'culture' and 'identity'; the only purpose they seem to serve is to confuse people and make them avoiding taking choices which will help them to live their lives to fullest.
I think it is foolish not to make a life style choice just because the community you identify with doesn't normally make such choice or its members aren't allowed to.
And culture - except for really first civilizations bronze age-iron age ; great civilizations that were also really productive in sciences and arts have only shown up only in places where people have been willing to learn from different cultures. Romans were willing to learn Greek Philosophies, Ottoman empire learned sciences and philosophies both from Romans and Indians, Mughals at their best Akbar, Shah Jahan, Jahangir had artists from every living culture in their courtrooms, renaissance artists were willing to adopt dead civilizations and gods of Greece.
Even colonial empires were in time of their rise translating literature of their colonies. Russia's great literary periods were at best when authors like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy were studying ideas from around the world and ended slowly when they raised the Iron curtain.
USA's first became world power when it was willing to accept migrants from around the world. More recently, the Latin American literary boom was the result of works by authors who refuse to limit their inspirations to Latin America.
It thus seems foolish to denounce something just because it wasn't first created or done in the country. Okay now some ramblings on India - there is nothing more about the book itself.
The problem of these confusing words is particularly relevant to India - where there is always a talk of saving Aryan, Hindu and Indian culture. There is a fallacious reasoning that just because something is being done for centuries, we should continue to do it. Another very stupid belief is older is somehow better. So Vedas are superior because they come earlier than other books and culture; being first ancestors they deserve to be followed.
But if you go along this chain of reasoning - we should rather be living on trees because we lived on trees even before we wrote books and monkeys are our real ancestors. Also, think of it, the practise of Sati was defended on cultural reasons.
IMO, culture should not be thought of as a guide to direct our future but in terms of footsteps left behind by society. Same thing with those goon attacks on pubs. Have you ever wondered what part of pub-culture is not Indian? A pub is just a public drinking place and such public drinking places were always there in India. What are called pubs are merely more fashionable.
It isn't drinking itself these culture-protectionists are against or they would have attacked alcohol factories. It is not men getting drunk or getting drunk in public they are against - again those things that has always been done in India.
You might for once think their problem is presence women at those places but wrong- the problem is not the fact of the presence of women itself but who those women are. You see these goons maintain a list of actions that a good man can do but good women can't. And so The recording covers my question on the first line of her latest novel at I was thirteen years old when my brother died. It happened in Although interestingly one already gets the idea that it will be Tambu who suffers the longer lasting consequences in later books.
At first she is convinced the issue is poverty: My mother said being black was a burden because it made you poor, but Babamukuru was not poor. My mother said being a woman was a burden because you had to bear children and look after them and the husband. But I did not think this was true.
Nervous Conditions study guide contains a biography of Tsitsi Dangarembga, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Nervous Conditions essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga. Remember me. Forgot your password? Buy Study Guide. Sorry, this is more of a creative writing assignment than a short answer question.
Study Guide for Nervous Conditions Nervous Conditions study guide contains a biography of Tsitsi Dangarembga, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis. Essays for Nervous Conditions Nervous Conditions essays are academic essays for citation.
Victims Victims Everywhere!
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