Tsitsi Dangarembga

Tsitsi Dangarembga is now a staple of African literature courses with her novel Nervous Conditiosn. This novel was written in 1988 and won its big prize in 1989. Since then, Dangarembga has played on the local stage in Zimbabwe, recently winning prizes for her films in at the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou. She emphasizes local issues and the struggle for identity in her books and films.

Nervous Conditions is often hailed as autobiographical, but the reader needs to decide whether Tambudzai or Nyasha are carrying the weight of her experience. In my understanding of the story and Dangarembga's personal story, it seems like she is mixed into both characters, which makes Nyasha a more interesting character. I am interested that she chose Tambudzai to be her central character through which we experience Nyasha. Does that make Nyasha more pathetic or more heroic, or, of course, both? This was her first novel, and since then she has gained more narrative experience. There is uncomfortable pacing that can be accommodated by an experienced reader, I think, but even after reading it several times, I find the ending unsatisfactory, abrupt, rushed. This time around I can try to read it more slowly and see if I can appreciate it more.

Despite all her fame, awards, and international attention, Dangarembga seems to have retained her self-possession, perhaps hard won, if her first novel is any indication. Here she is tearing up the dance floor at a film festival in Durban where she got some more prizes. I know a lot of academics, and none of them can do this! Or when they do, it is best to just look away.

Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer wrote, "The facts are always less than what really happened," and she admirably shows this in her writing. She is able to so fully capture the world view of a particular narrator, that the reader is offered an empathy with a person who, rationally, he or she would reject. Of course, we admire the heroine in "Amnesty" because she maintains her integrity and never gets bitter, even in the local injustices of her life. She keeps a greater goal in mind, but the reader has to shake his or her head and wonder as the personal sacrifices she is making for her country, which are unsung, not admired, and passed off as "woman's work." It is easy to hate the narrator of "Six Feet of the Country" and pity, in a kind of repulsed way, the narrator of "Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants." Gordimer is able to put us into the lives of these people who we can claim not to understand, and perhaps, come to a small understanding of the deluded lives they live.

With that insight, can we learn to see our own lives, our own city, that clearly? I look at P&G selling disposable diapers and sanitary napkins in Nigeria. Sure, these things are "liberating", in a way, but what about the cost? What about the way things were working before? What about the fact that Nigeria does not have a waste control system to handle all these new disposable diapers and sanitary napkins? This seems like weird imperialism all over again where the nurse is saying to the mothers, "These disposable diapers will help you child sleep through the night, so he will be healthier." But a wet diaper is not what is causing the high infant mortality rate in Nigeria: it is the lack of access to clean water. Helping these people have access to clean water is not on P&G's list of things to do. They will do what profits them, not the people who they see as a huge market now that US consumers are failing them. On the other hand, P&G is not responsible for waste management in its consumers' countries. Nigeria is responsible for this problem. A company's primary responsibility is its shareholders. While this is true, perhaps there is more profit in sustaining one's population of consumers. There is research to show that ethical behavior can, indeed, be support long term profits.

Gordimer uses the power of literature to create empathy with the bad guys and thus expose their thoughtlessness. She shows how complicated the emotional experience of the facts can be. Gordimer observes, "Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area." She makes a lot of sense about how people survive, and this is an important contribution to all of who are still trying to make sense of it all.

Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe is the great man of letters from Nigeria. He is at the top of all American university reading lists of African literature. However, he has spent much of his career at American universities since Nigeria was not a healthy place to stay and be a writer. His mastery of essay, novels, and short stories in English made him accessible to European readers, and so his name and work got out of African and onto American and European bookshelves. This paved the way for so many other African writers to gain legitimacy outside their countries to a global audience, but it all had to be done in the colonial languages. Africa has begun to value its writers, but totalitarian governments, perhaps, recognize their power all too well. Thus, many African writers have suffered much for their art. Writing is as much an act of creativity as it is of courage for these writers.

Achebe has never won the Nobel Prize for literature. Wole Soylinka and Nadine Gordimer have both won it, and both have cited Achebe as one of their great colleagues. Achebe is quite philosophical about the Nobel Prize. In an interview he says, "My position is that the Nobel Prize is important. But it is a European prize. It's not an African prize.... Literature is not a heavyweight championship. Nigerians may think, you know, this man has been knocked out. It's nothing to do with that." One cannot disagree, and this view is consistent with the sentiments he so cuttingly expresses in "Image of Africa."

The essay and short stories we read for this session of our class are excellent examples of how racism is not limited to one people: everyone can suffer from it. In addition, the damaging world views that come from it re-create all parties into people they are not. Achebe champions seeing people as individuals first, and he urges us to be compassionate and just in our dealings with everyone. This is as true for Africa as it is for people of all cultures. It seems to me that even when Achebe is writing locally, he still has global themes that can inspire readers from any culture.