Nervous Conditions

Two female characters, Marji from Persepolis, and Tambu from Nervous Conditions, go through struggles to overcome entrapment and ultimately escape. Throughout these two novels, Marji and Tambu both embody most of the ten characteristics of an archetypal female hero. Marji and Tambu both experience gender expectations, become an outcast, and go on a journey to create a better life. Also, in the beginning of both novels, Marji and Tambu live an ordinary life, then confront gender oppression, decide to act, and finally create a new beginning. Marji, from Persepolis, is forced to go through these experiences because of the circumstances of her society. On the other hand, Tambu, from Nervous Conditions, is able to make a choice on how she wants…

Nervous Conditions and Upsetting Illnesses Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions focuses on many difficulties the indigenous people of Rhodesia faced in the 1960s. English colonization resulted in a radical shift within the local education systems. Rather than learn about their own history, local children were taught about the greatness of Western culture. Due to this educational shift, Rhodesian children struggled to understand their identity amongst the old traditional ways of their…

Only a short while ago did the world figure out how devastating colonialism was; to the land, and the people who inhabit it. We hear a lot of stereotypes about the natives of Africa pertaining to cleanliness and intelligence. Nervous Conditions a “coming of age” novel by Tsitsi Dangarembga challenges these stereotypes with the story of two young girls. Though, her family portrays the opposite of these stereotypes it doesn’t mean that it comes without problems. We see a lot of psychological…

Brave Women in Nervous Conditions “Can you cook books and feed them to your husband? Stay at home with your mother. Learn to cook and clean. Grow vegetables." (15) One of the most significant quotes in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions sets the tone on how women are viewed and treated throughout this story. Set in a postcolonial Zimbabwe Nervous Conditions tells the story of four women who are living in a man’s world. Underestimated, unappreciated and dominated, each of these women stand…

Raising children has never been- and never will be- easy. It is the responsibility of adults across the globe to turn their newborn, crying baby into a fully functional, intelligent, socially competent being in typically less than two decades. In an attempt to universalize this seemingly huge task, many civilizations have established certain criteria to judge a child’s level of social readiness. These criteria are especially prominent in African cultures. From childhood, African children are…

Nervous Conditions a novel about the ongoing journey about Tambu, a girl, fighting for the right to go to school and receive an education. Throughout the novel, there are many conflicts that make achieving her goal a difficult process. For being a woman, her family being poor and being an African. The novel is not just about Tambu’s struggles, but about other people in her family such as her aunts and cousin. The novel Nervous Conditions carries out the theme of discrimination between class,…

Introduction “Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?” (Anthony Burgess) Colonialism could actually be perceived as the complete opposite of spreading reason, depending on one’s perspective. Colonialism is defined as one group, dominant and self-perceived as superior, imposing its morals, values, technology, and culture upon another group of people. This intrusion into an established identity of a people could instead be viewed…

get inside the mind of the colonized. We don’t see how these changes effect them internally. The novel Nervous Conditions looks at how the actions taken during colonization cause the natives to enter these nervous conditions. Colonization in African nation nations caused the native peoples to enter into a sort of nervous condition. The colonizers, white people from Europe, would come into the villages of…

Does the influence of external and internal worlds impact the shaping and growth of our identities? Literature has the captivating ability to broaden and expand society’s knowledge of human complexity, and impact readers’ intellectual perceptions of their external and internal worlds. This is further investigated in both Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, as they provide perceptive offerings into colonial societies and families’ crucial influence on an…

Aysha Rathor Anthropology Nervous Condition Nervous Condition is an autobiographical novel written by a Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga that takes place in Rhodesia in early 1970s. The book focuses on themes of gender, class and race through the eyes of a young female(Tambu) protagonist. The title of the book references Jean Paul book The Wretched of the Earth in which he states, “status of 'native' is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler among the…