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fridayeblack 's review for:
Nervous Conditions
by Tsitsi Dangarembga
This book was very well written and I tore through it.
It's easy to find a fiction book that tells a story of tragic injustice that leaves the reader with a simple blanket feeling of "this whole situation is wrong/terrible/unjust".
But this book goes deeper than the obvious blanket takeaways that "societal oppression of women is wrong", "colonialism is bad" etc. It tries to reconcile the evil, with the lesser evil, with the lesser lesser evils.
I think it's harder to find a story that can show injustice but can also be ambiguous and hesitate before placing blame explicitly. As a person I think our instinct when identifying a "wrong" is to quickly find a causation/maybe place blame and ensure we do not make the same error and avoid being blamed in turn. When the author hesitates to pass judgement on characters and actions, that we WANT to judge, there is space put in the text to unpack the elements of the injustice/wrongness. This space is created by the perspective of the narrator, a young girl, who is struggling to sort out the just and unjust, while both benefiting and being burdened. Depending on the type of reader, the style of the narrator may enlighten, or force, us to see from another angle.
Written in 1988 and set in 1970s Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) it explores issues of gender, class, racial inequality that are still relevant in Zimbabwe. The author has written more recent sequels long after the first novel continuing to dissect these themes.
This book is also written with the Zimbabwean/African woman as the audience, it does not waste time explaining or giving context to culture or tradition. It assumes we all understand the way it is and it moves along and keeps focused on what the narrator is trying to tell us. I appreciate this choice by the author, it keeps the reader in the story with the characters.
It's easy to find a fiction book that tells a story of tragic injustice that leaves the reader with a simple blanket feeling of "this whole situation is wrong/terrible/unjust".
But this book goes deeper than the obvious blanket takeaways that "societal oppression of women is wrong", "colonialism is bad" etc. It tries to reconcile the evil, with the lesser evil, with the lesser lesser evils.
I think it's harder to find a story that can show injustice but can also be ambiguous and hesitate before placing blame explicitly. As a person I think our instinct when identifying a "wrong" is to quickly find a causation/maybe place blame and ensure we do not make the same error and avoid being blamed in turn. When the author hesitates to pass judgement on characters and actions, that we WANT to judge, there is space put in the text to unpack the elements of the injustice/wrongness. This space is created by the perspective of the narrator, a young girl, who is struggling to sort out the just and unjust, while both benefiting and being burdened. Depending on the type of reader, the style of the narrator may enlighten, or force, us to see from another angle.
Written in 1988 and set in 1970s Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) it explores issues of gender, class, racial inequality that are still relevant in Zimbabwe. The author has written more recent sequels long after the first novel continuing to dissect these themes.
This book is also written with the Zimbabwean/African woman as the audience, it does not waste time explaining or giving context to culture or tradition. It assumes we all understand the way it is and it moves along and keeps focused on what the narrator is trying to tell us. I appreciate this choice by the author, it keeps the reader in the story with the characters.