Scan barcode
johanna_pe's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Mental illness
and_so_it_goes's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
A solid read, but the writing style was very simple and once Tambu got to the mission there was a lot of time skips. I understand it was on purpose, but it was a less enjoyable reading experience as suddenly 50% of the way through the first person narrator becomes more of a passive observer. Nyasha is the metaphorical “protagonist” once she moves to her uncle’s house, and her story is very sad. Her breakdown scene upset me, especially knowing what caused it. The ending is a tad abrupt.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Eating disorder, Misogyny, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Racism and Colonisation
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Infidelity, and Pregnancy
saravee's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
ianpauljones's review against another edition
5.0
This edition of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel has an introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah that was written twenty years ago and sixteen years after the novel was first published in the UK. In many ways not much has changed since 1988 or 2004 in terms of gender. And maybe not since the novel’s setting in the Sixties and early Seventies. In fact, maybe we’re going backwards. Kwame Appiah’s introduction begins with the first words of the novel proper: “I was not sorry when my brother died.” Those words are written by a woman of indeterminate age remembering the day her brother failed to come home for the holidays from his mission school. The narrator, Tambu, was around thirteen at the time, her brother Nhamo a year older. We learn that they lived in what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Theirs is a family of subsistence farmers who are not quite dirt poor as they have a reasonably sized house with some furniture. Two reasons they’re not on the breadline – despite the laziness of their feckless father Jeremiah – are the industriousness of Tambu’s mother and the benevolence of her uncle, Babamukuru. He is headmaster of the mission school in a nearby town and he and his wife Maiguru have had the good fortune to go to university in South Africa and England. He lives in a big house, has servants and two cars and he takes Nhamo under his wing. The plan is that the boy will benefit from a good education and raise his side of the family further up the social ladder.
Despite the value that many characters – including Tambu – place on education, there is a strong feeling that it is wasted on males and females in different ways. Babamukuru has had access to “western” ideas, having spent five years in England in the Swinging Sixties doing a Masters. However, he has still come home as a patriarch with traditional ideas about hierarchy and a “woman’s place”. His wife Maiguru is also a post-graduate but she has had little opportunity to use her education, apart from doing some teaching at the mission school. She is a submissive wife who humours her husband and rarely challenges his authority. Nhamo as a teenage boy appears to be following Babamukuru’s example. He has been doing well at school but he uses his male privilege to lord it over Tambu and remind her that as a girl she is his social and intellectual inferior. He is lazy and selfish and refuses to help on the farm when he comes home for the holidays. Meanwhile Tambu often has to miss classes at the local school to milk the cows or because there is no money to pay the fees. Being the resourceful type, at the age of about eight she starts growing maize to sell in the local town to pay the school fees. She gets not support from her family for this, including her mother, who is suspicious of education. Neither of her parents believe that girls need any education beyond cooking and chores around the farm.
Then Tambu’s brother dies suddenly of mumps. His death opens doors for Tambu because her uncle decides that she must replace Nhamo as her family’s hope for the future. This puts her in closer touch with her cousin Nyasha. You think this is going to be a wonderful, rich friendship but it’s problematic. Nyasha is about the same age as Tambu, but she has spent five years in England with her parents and has come back with a head full of western traits (we see her reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover) and a miniskirt. Tambu still shares her family’s traditional ideas so she finds Nyasha’s version of Sixties permissiveness (short skirts, smoking, hanging out with boys) rather shocking. However, they share a room and after some initial mutual suspicion, they do become friends. Nyasha can’t reconcile her experience of life in England and her intellectual curiosity with the straitjacket that traditional norms impose on her and she develops bulimia. This is her protest against paternal authority and the injunction for women to give men curves. Which reminds me that the novel has another admirable female character, her mother’s sister, Lucia. She likes having sex with men and although this has disadvantages for her – she gets pregnant by a deadbeat – she has enough spirit to flick the finger at anyone who sneers at her. She also has enough brains to get her way. She persuades Babamukuru to give her a cooking job at the mission school, which enables her to go to evening classes. A better future awaits her.
I won’t say what becomes of Tambu, but there is hope at the end of the novel that a better future awaits her too.
I will definitely read more books by Tsitsi Dangarembga.
Despite the value that many characters – including Tambu – place on education, there is a strong feeling that it is wasted on males and females in different ways. Babamukuru has had access to “western” ideas, having spent five years in England in the Swinging Sixties doing a Masters. However, he has still come home as a patriarch with traditional ideas about hierarchy and a “woman’s place”. His wife Maiguru is also a post-graduate but she has had little opportunity to use her education, apart from doing some teaching at the mission school. She is a submissive wife who humours her husband and rarely challenges his authority. Nhamo as a teenage boy appears to be following Babamukuru’s example. He has been doing well at school but he uses his male privilege to lord it over Tambu and remind her that as a girl she is his social and intellectual inferior. He is lazy and selfish and refuses to help on the farm when he comes home for the holidays. Meanwhile Tambu often has to miss classes at the local school to milk the cows or because there is no money to pay the fees. Being the resourceful type, at the age of about eight she starts growing maize to sell in the local town to pay the school fees. She gets not support from her family for this, including her mother, who is suspicious of education. Neither of her parents believe that girls need any education beyond cooking and chores around the farm.
Then Tambu’s brother dies suddenly of mumps. His death opens doors for Tambu because her uncle decides that she must replace Nhamo as her family’s hope for the future. This puts her in closer touch with her cousin Nyasha. You think this is going to be a wonderful, rich friendship but it’s problematic. Nyasha is about the same age as Tambu, but she has spent five years in England with her parents and has come back with a head full of western traits (we see her reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover) and a miniskirt. Tambu still shares her family’s traditional ideas so she finds Nyasha’s version of Sixties permissiveness (short skirts, smoking, hanging out with boys) rather shocking. However, they share a room and after some initial mutual suspicion, they do become friends. Nyasha can’t reconcile her experience of life in England and her intellectual curiosity with the straitjacket that traditional norms impose on her and she develops bulimia. This is her protest against paternal authority and the injunction for women to give men curves. Which reminds me that the novel has another admirable female character, her mother’s sister, Lucia. She likes having sex with men and although this has disadvantages for her – she gets pregnant by a deadbeat – she has enough spirit to flick the finger at anyone who sneers at her. She also has enough brains to get her way. She persuades Babamukuru to give her a cooking job at the mission school, which enables her to go to evening classes. A better future awaits her.
I won’t say what becomes of Tambu, but there is hope at the end of the novel that a better future awaits her too.
I will definitely read more books by Tsitsi Dangarembga.
loloslibrary's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
brughiera's review against another edition
4.0
Most striking about this novel is the perspective, that of a Shona village girl in the second part of the twentieth century. Tambu’s feisty character is revealed in the opening sentence where she states that she was not sorry when her brother died. This is linked to her hunger for education, initially denied to her when her brother, the male heir, is the one chosen by her English-educated uncle, Babamukuru, to be supported in his studies, while Tambu has to drop out. She determines to earn the necessary fees and grows her own maize crop. The discovery that her own brother has been stealing her mealies fortuitously leads to her getting the advice and assistance of the teacher, Mr Makimba. She sells her maize and Mr Makimba ensures the proceeds go towards her school fees.
After the death of her brother, Tambu is the one supported by her uncle and she goes to live with his family at the mission and attend his school. Her experiences are contrasted with those of Nyasha, Babamukuru’s daughter, who spent her early years in England and whose rebellious attitude towards her father stands out against Tambu’s gratitude. The dynamics of extended family relationships play out further in visits to the homestead of Babamakuru leading to the ridiculous requirement of a formal marriage of Tambu’s father to her mother. But the focus of the novel remains on Tambu’s determination to be educated which culminates in her acceptance of a place at the Young Ladies College of the Sacred Heart. Although she revels in the educational opportunities, a cloud is cast by the psychiatric illness (anorexia?) of her cousin Nyasha. The ominous words of Tambu’s mother: “The problem is the Englishness, so just you be careful!” imply that much remains to be told of the lives of both Tambu and Nyasha.
While this is a very personal story, it is also emblematic of the historical context of what was then Rhodesia with a focus on the circumstances of girls and women at that time. Through the excellent story-telling the history becomes memorable.
After the death of her brother, Tambu is the one supported by her uncle and she goes to live with his family at the mission and attend his school. Her experiences are contrasted with those of Nyasha, Babamukuru’s daughter, who spent her early years in England and whose rebellious attitude towards her father stands out against Tambu’s gratitude. The dynamics of extended family relationships play out further in visits to the homestead of Babamakuru leading to the ridiculous requirement of a formal marriage of Tambu’s father to her mother. But the focus of the novel remains on Tambu’s determination to be educated which culminates in her acceptance of a place at the Young Ladies College of the Sacred Heart. Although she revels in the educational opportunities, a cloud is cast by the psychiatric illness (anorexia?) of her cousin Nyasha. The ominous words of Tambu’s mother: “The problem is the Englishness, so just you be careful!” imply that much remains to be told of the lives of both Tambu and Nyasha.
While this is a very personal story, it is also emblematic of the historical context of what was then Rhodesia with a focus on the circumstances of girls and women at that time. Through the excellent story-telling the history becomes memorable.
donnalwhitney's review
4.0
I can't believe I have not read this before. The book is about the life of a young girl in eastern Rhodesia circa 1970, very close to where I lived in the early 70s. The descriptions of daily life brought back so many memories, including little things I had forgotten, such as games that I played with my friends (pada!). Many of the names of people and places in the book are so familiar, and yet of course I didn't really know what life was like for my friends, so reading a book from the point of view of a young Shona girl trying to get ahead in her life in that time and place was very intense and moving.
kamasue's review
4.0
I love reading about experiences that are completely outside of my own. I especially like it when the backdrop is of a time period and politics I also know nothing about. TD's writing style is deceptively casual, even funny at times, though she is describing important, if not monumental situations. Looking forward to reading the sequel.
midnight_blossom89's review
1.0
Contrary to most of the reviews, I didn't enjoy this book. It was okay at first, the characters are admittedly very well-developed and its concern with articulating the effects of colonialism is impressive - especially the decline of Nyasha who was, alongside Lucia, my favourite character. The ending wasn't particularly positive which I suppose is suggestive of the author's progressive state, but perhaps through my own immaturity I could not get past the anger I felt at the men in the novel and the patriarchal society that Tambu bowed down to. Granted it was all she had ever known and should obviously be looked at from a culturally objective point of view, but I couldn't get past it enough to enjoy the reading - though in some instances she appeared very strong, she was often and quickly broken down again and not just by the Whites: hers and all of the other women's inferiority was perpetuated by their own men, and despite her one rebellion on the day of her mother's wedding, she never fully emerges with the strength Nyasha embodies - even Nyasha herself calls Tambu 'spineless' and yet Nyasha is the one who ends up having to see a psychiatrist, eventually regressing and claiming that her father is as much a victim as she is despite the fact that, by his own standard of behaviour, he puts her down, accuses her constantly of promiscuity, beats her to a pulp and threatens to kill her when all she ever does is study, achieve the highest grades and speak her mind. Personally, I was unsatisfied.