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aguaa 's review for:
This Mournable Body
by Tsitsi Dangarembga
forgot to add this when i read it!
i thought the portrayal of ptsd was interesting, very moving; and once again the writing style was delightful. liked it
"you watch the expertise of her fingers enviously as she strips off lengths of black rubber, repairing the hosepipe from her bounty. deftly, she lays the hose spout at the highest point of a seedling bed while she swings a hoe. she waters the sweet peas around the widow's cottage. she sweeps the students' slab. she replants a patch of grass under the guava tree. she is a woman who is good at what she does. and this is intriguing. the new woman does not sweat, nor do you see her out of breath. she is too calm at every task as though her core has fled to a distant place disconnected from her body. her look, hidden under her bland expression, travels far beyond the widow's cottage. she stares down the shaft of her gaze as though when the time comes she will weave herself into it to slide away to a place where vision coincides with a deep wanting. you have seen this manner before, this being where the body is and not being there, in your sister netsai, who went to war, who lost a leg, and who said to you when they said there was peace, 'yes, i went and i am here but i never came back. most of the time i'm still out there wandering through the grass and sand, looking for my leg."
"it is now too late to begin the conversation you should have had weeks ago, when chrisitine came, concerning your family and their need and your inability to do anything about those needs because of your city poverty. christine has that layer under her skin that cuts off her outside from her inside and allows no communication between the person she once believed she could be and the person she has in fact become. the one does not acknowledge the other's existence. the women from war are like that, a new kind of being that no one knew before, not exactly male but no longer female. it is rumoured the blood stopped flowing to their wombs the first time they killed a person. people whisper that the unspeakable acts were even more iniquitous when performed by women, so that the ancestors tied up the nation's prosperity in repugnance at the awfulness of it, just as they had done to the women's wombs. it occurs to you that you are more like christine than you are like mai manyanga: christine with her fruitless war that brought nothing but false hope and a fresh, more complete variety of discouragement. you with your worthless education intensifying your beggary, making it all the more ludicrous."
"'my child, tambu' says mainini. 'war just shrinks in peacetime, isn't it? that's what i saw. i just went into that little space that is still there. so how can kiri and i be useless?'"
i thought the portrayal of ptsd was interesting, very moving; and once again the writing style was delightful. liked it
"you watch the expertise of her fingers enviously as she strips off lengths of black rubber, repairing the hosepipe from her bounty. deftly, she lays the hose spout at the highest point of a seedling bed while she swings a hoe. she waters the sweet peas around the widow's cottage. she sweeps the students' slab. she replants a patch of grass under the guava tree. she is a woman who is good at what she does. and this is intriguing. the new woman does not sweat, nor do you see her out of breath. she is too calm at every task as though her core has fled to a distant place disconnected from her body. her look, hidden under her bland expression, travels far beyond the widow's cottage. she stares down the shaft of her gaze as though when the time comes she will weave herself into it to slide away to a place where vision coincides with a deep wanting. you have seen this manner before, this being where the body is and not being there, in your sister netsai, who went to war, who lost a leg, and who said to you when they said there was peace, 'yes, i went and i am here but i never came back. most of the time i'm still out there wandering through the grass and sand, looking for my leg."
"it is now too late to begin the conversation you should have had weeks ago, when chrisitine came, concerning your family and their need and your inability to do anything about those needs because of your city poverty. christine has that layer under her skin that cuts off her outside from her inside and allows no communication between the person she once believed she could be and the person she has in fact become. the one does not acknowledge the other's existence. the women from war are like that, a new kind of being that no one knew before, not exactly male but no longer female. it is rumoured the blood stopped flowing to their wombs the first time they killed a person. people whisper that the unspeakable acts were even more iniquitous when performed by women, so that the ancestors tied up the nation's prosperity in repugnance at the awfulness of it, just as they had done to the women's wombs. it occurs to you that you are more like christine than you are like mai manyanga: christine with her fruitless war that brought nothing but false hope and a fresh, more complete variety of discouragement. you with your worthless education intensifying your beggary, making it all the more ludicrous."
"'my child, tambu' says mainini. 'war just shrinks in peacetime, isn't it? that's what i saw. i just went into that little space that is still there. so how can kiri and i be useless?'"