This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga

This chapter examines the functioning of the feminist NGO Associated Women of Zimbabwe (AWZ) to highlight varieties of feminism and the influence of a political and economic crisis on a feminist organization in Zimbabwe at the turn of the twenty-first century. After providing a brief history of AWZ, the chapter considers its experiences to demonstrate how women consciously organize to fight sexism in Zimbabwean society. It then explores AWZ's role in the political process as it advocated for women and promoted women's civil rights in the context of increasing political competition, electoral violence, and a declining economy. It also discusses cosmopolitan feminism in Zimbabwe and the relationship between AWZ and the state—especially in relation to the politics of inclusion, state-sponsored violence, and economic decline; explains how an organization that once stood against government lost its edge, even as government became more oppressive; and analyzes the fiction of Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga. The chapter concludes by showing what happens to an NGO dependent on international donors when the money stream begins to dry up.

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Women’s Virtue: Engendering Shame

10.3828/liverpool/9781800348431.003.0008 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 117-155

Keyword(s):

Short Stories ◽

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o ◽

Female Characters ◽

Mariama Ba ◽

Buchi Emecheta ◽

Tsitsi Dangarembga ◽

Ama Ata Aidoo ◽

Societal Issues ◽

The Feminine

A focus on shame and the feminine, considering how female characters and shame are linked in order to address both explicitly female concerns as well as how those concerns can stand in for larger societal issues. The chapter revisits elements from Le vieux nègre et la médaille and Les Bouts de bois de Dieu but concentrates much more on Une si longue lettre by Mariama Bâ, A River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, short stories by Ama Ata Aidoo, and Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie.

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Book Review: Tsitsi Dangarembga, (2006) The Book of Not. Oxfordshire, UK: Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd. pp. 144. ISBN 0954702379

Journal of Asian and African Studies ◽

10.1177/00219096070420060603 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 42 (6) ◽

pp. 578-579

Author(s):

Heather Margolis

Keyword(s):

Tsitsi Dangarembga

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