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Black and Female: Essays
The first wound for all of us who are classified as “black” is empire.
In Black and Female, Tsitsi Dangarembga examines the legacy of imperialism on her own life and on every aspect of black embodied African life.
This paradigm-shifting essay collection weaves the personal and political in an illuminating exploration of race and gender. Dangarembga recounts a painful separation from her parents as a toddler, connecting this experience to the ruptures caused in Africa by human trafficking and enslavement. She argues that, after independence, the ruling party in Zimbabwe only performed inclusion for women while silencing the work of self-actualized feminists. She describes her struggles to realize her ambitions in theater, film, and literature, laying out the long path to the publication of her novels.
At once philosophical, intimate, and urgent, Black and Female is a powerful testimony of the pervasive and long-lasting effects of racism and patriarchy that provides an ultimately hopeful vision for change. Black feminists are “the status quo’s worst nightmare.” Dangarembga writes, “our conviction is deep, bolstered by a vivid imagination that reminds us that other realities are possible beyond the one that obtains.”
In Black and Female, Tsitsi Dangarembga examines the legacy of imperialism on her own life and on every aspect of black embodied African life.
This paradigm-shifting essay collection weaves the personal and political in an illuminating exploration of race and gender. Dangarembga recounts a painful separation from her parents as a toddler, connecting this experience to the ruptures caused in Africa by human trafficking and enslavement. She argues that, after independence, the ruling party in Zimbabwe only performed inclusion for women while silencing the work of self-actualized feminists. She describes her struggles to realize her ambitions in theater, film, and literature, laying out the long path to the publication of her novels.
At once philosophical, intimate, and urgent, Black and Female is a powerful testimony of the pervasive and long-lasting effects of racism and patriarchy that provides an ultimately hopeful vision for change. Black feminists are “the status quo’s worst nightmare.” Dangarembga writes, “our conviction is deep, bolstered by a vivid imagination that reminds us that other realities are possible beyond the one that obtains.”
128 pages, Hardcover
First published January 17, 2023
81 people are currently reading
4201 people want to read
About the author
Tsitsi Dangarembga
14 books1,064 followersSpent part of her childhood in England. She began her education there, but concluded her A-levels in a missionary school back home, in the town of Mutare. She later studied medicine at Cambridge University, but became homesick and returned home as Zimbabwe's black-majority rule began in 1980.
She took up psychology at the University of Zimbabwe, of whose drama group she was a member. She also held down a two-year job as a copywriter at a marketing agency. This early writing experience gave her an avenue for expression: she wrote numerous plays, such as The Lost of the Soil, and then joined the theatre group Zambuko, and participated in the production of two plays, Katshaa and Mavambo.
In 1985, Dangarembga published a short story in Sweden called The Letter. In 1987, she also published the play She Does Not Weep in Harare. At the age of twenty-five, she had her first taste of success with her novel Nervous Conditions. The first in English ever written by a black Zimbabwean woman, it won the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1989. Asked about her subsequent prose drought, she explained, "There have been two major reasons for my not having worked on prose since Nervous Conditions: firstly, the novel was published only after I had turned to film as a medium; secondly, Virginia Woolf's shrewd observation that a woman needs £500 and a room of her own in order to write is entirely valid. Incidentally, I am moving and hope that, for the first time since Nervous Conditions, I shall have a room of my own. I'll try to ignore the bit about £500."
Dangarembga continued her education later in Berlin at the Deutsche Film und Fernseh Akademie, where she studied film direction and produced several film productions, including a documentary for German television. She also made the film Everyone's Child, shown worldwide including at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.
She took up psychology at the University of Zimbabwe, of whose drama group she was a member. She also held down a two-year job as a copywriter at a marketing agency. This early writing experience gave her an avenue for expression: she wrote numerous plays, such as The Lost of the Soil, and then joined the theatre group Zambuko, and participated in the production of two plays, Katshaa and Mavambo.
In 1985, Dangarembga published a short story in Sweden called The Letter. In 1987, she also published the play She Does Not Weep in Harare. At the age of twenty-five, she had her first taste of success with her novel Nervous Conditions. The first in English ever written by a black Zimbabwean woman, it won the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1989. Asked about her subsequent prose drought, she explained, "There have been two major reasons for my not having worked on prose since Nervous Conditions: firstly, the novel was published only after I had turned to film as a medium; secondly, Virginia Woolf's shrewd observation that a woman needs £500 and a room of her own in order to write is entirely valid. Incidentally, I am moving and hope that, for the first time since Nervous Conditions, I shall have a room of my own. I'll try to ignore the bit about £500."
Dangarembga continued her education later in Berlin at the Deutsche Film und Fernseh Akademie, where she studied film direction and produced several film productions, including a documentary for German television. She also made the film Everyone's Child, shown worldwide including at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.
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June 4, 2024
🌳🌳Tsitsi Dangarembga writes an autobiographical work which includes many (not all) of her life experiences from childhood to the present; her struggles to become a writer and get published; the ongoing history, good and bad, of her homeland Zimbabwe 🇿🇼; her black feminist outlook, philosophy and beliefs.
It’s a very political book for she deals with patriarchy especially as it’s entrenched in government power structures, Zimbabwe being a prime example. She uses the word “empire” to describe not just the ongoing phenomenon of white supremacy, but its negative and pervasive ideology as well. Including how it adversely affects black female writers.
I learned a great deal. I was listening. Her book crackles with anger and outrage. It is a heavy read, yet a read bristling with life. It is the heart cry, mind cry and soul cry of a woman who I hope still has much to say to us (this title is a recent publication).
I knew I could, at least, connect with her as a writer, for a writer is a writer, and, as she says herself, she as a writer is not solely defined by the fact she is black (she appears to prefer the term melanated) or that she is female. “I am,” she declares. And I believe I can say that alongside her, if she will permit me - that while I am affected by it, I am not solely defined by the fact I’m white and a male. There is more to my story and spirit.
📕I would like her to write a book in the future completely about writing, about imagining and feeling and developing a storyline, about putting the words that matter to the screen. I would enjoy such a book from her very, very much ✨ ✨
It’s a very political book for she deals with patriarchy especially as it’s entrenched in government power structures, Zimbabwe being a prime example. She uses the word “empire” to describe not just the ongoing phenomenon of white supremacy, but its negative and pervasive ideology as well. Including how it adversely affects black female writers.
I learned a great deal. I was listening. Her book crackles with anger and outrage. It is a heavy read, yet a read bristling with life. It is the heart cry, mind cry and soul cry of a woman who I hope still has much to say to us (this title is a recent publication).
I knew I could, at least, connect with her as a writer, for a writer is a writer, and, as she says herself, she as a writer is not solely defined by the fact she is black (she appears to prefer the term melanated) or that she is female. “I am,” she declares. And I believe I can say that alongside her, if she will permit me - that while I am affected by it, I am not solely defined by the fact I’m white and a male. There is more to my story and spirit.
📕I would like her to write a book in the future completely about writing, about imagining and feeling and developing a storyline, about putting the words that matter to the screen. I would enjoy such a book from her very, very much ✨ ✨
September 26, 2022
“Genocide, slavery and colonisation are the DNA not just of the modern Western empire, but all of the empire.”
“We cannot change the earth, a fact that leaves us with no choice but to change ourselves.”
“We cannot change the earth, a fact that leaves us with no choice but to change ourselves.”
March 4, 2023
Wowz despite making me feel like I had a jacket potato instead of a brain this was excellent to read. Every sentence slapped. Granted, I had to re-read most sentences until I understood them but when I did!!!! 🔥🔥FYYREE.
When my girl said “white people do not know what makes them white because the world is created through white normative power” and “knowledge that is founded on notions of inequality will build unequal worlds for humans to occupy and unequal systems for us to function in” whhewwwwww CHILEE.
Tell me why I STILL owe a debt of circa £30k to the government for an education that only taught me about Immanuel KUNT, Hegel, David Hume and John Locke. WHY WHY WHYYYYY. give me it back I want a refund based on ONE SIDED & SUBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE.
When my girl said “white people do not know what makes them white because the world is created through white normative power” and “knowledge that is founded on notions of inequality will build unequal worlds for humans to occupy and unequal systems for us to function in” whhewwwwww CHILEE.
Tell me why I STILL owe a debt of circa £30k to the government for an education that only taught me about Immanuel KUNT, Hegel, David Hume and John Locke. WHY WHY WHYYYYY. give me it back I want a refund based on ONE SIDED & SUBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE.
September 19, 2022
Radical and brilliant. A must read text
February 26, 2023
Review to come. Very long, meditated, review to come.
edit**
If I could sum up this collections of essays in two words they would be "I hurt."And I don't mean that this book has been so poignant that I hurt, rather I am identifying a preexisting wound, articulating the collective symptoms this book has helped me diagnose as disease.
The implications of colonialism, the patriarchy, and whiteness have been discussed enough I mistakenly thought I could recognize the symptoms of them in my life. I have never shied away from discussion of any of the three, one might argue I actively seek them. And yet I never really knew the roots, especially as a Zimbabwean, that CPW (colonialism, the patriarchy and whiteness) branched from.
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a celebrated Zimbabwean, author, playwright, director, and feminist. One of the things that was stressed in the essays, specifically Black, Female and the Superwoman Black Feminist is that there are different types of feminism. The two main types referenced are 'black feminism' and 'western feminism'. Of course, black here has less to do with the conditions typically perceived with blackness, that to say it is blackness as location rather than personhood. And while us feminists in the west, are inundated with causes that focus on fighting against the capitalist patriarchal system in such a way that rewards are redistributed, black feminists, and quite frankly all feminists in developing countries are trying to "imagine a new world that has not been seen before."
In these places it is better to be an external feminist than an internal one, supporting policies that open the gates for women, though not agreeing outright/ supporting the feminist cause. Because in these places feminists are exiled, ostracized, refused work, and occasionally silenced. There is no system of fairness to fall back on, no courts who will hear that your manager groped you, that a man touched your chest on a walk through to the market. At least, the system is not half as supportive as it should be. So it is better to keep your head low, it is pragmatic even, which makes the work of these feminists all the more admirable. They are not fighting for redistribution: they are fighting for creation.
And these instances of groping, leering, and general uncomfortableness is something that is unfortunately a universal experience for women, hence the 97% statistic (one which states that 97% of women will face some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime.) Womanhood, especially as a POC is articulated so aptly by Dangarembga.
"At the same time I learnt comforting, tidy rules of writing, I began my menses. There had been hints before that something ominous would inevitably happen: don't sit like that; don't be so strident; don't talk back like that; go and cook- these were all admonishments directed at me and not my brother."
This description of burgeoning womanhood being something ominous, both alien and something to be afraid of just by the way younger girls are warned/ chastised about their behaviour is something so embedded and normalized I didn't even know it was something to articulate. In school systems girls have more stringent dress code rules than their boy counterparts do, and I grew up constantly warned about my behaviour; that sitting this way was unwomanly, doing xx was a girl's responsibility. And of course this being just another symptom of disease.
And what I loved even more about this collection of essays is that while it traced back the historical roots of colonialism in Zimbabwe, from Cecil Rhodes, to Ian Smith, and the ZANU PF etc. it also alludes to the social and cultural significance that women held prior to colonialism, and that before Zimbabwe was taken by the British, gendered roles were very much a thing. Of course, I wouldn't say having gendered roles is something unique to any culture, especially if you delve back deep enough, but I think its important to acknowledge that the roots of the patriarchy extend further back than colonialism, and that colonialism isn't synonymous with the 'start' of life in any African country.
Dangarembga is again, someone who wears many hats, and in fact non-fiction writing isn't the first medium she gravitates towards, and this is something I thought made her collection so accessible and hard-hitting. Any experience she described was presented in the most artful and digestible prose. But she was never superfluous. The hardest essay to read was likely the intro, but that was because I am a fiction lover at heart, and that first essay/intro was about strict the history of Zimbabwe. But since it was Zimbabwe it was still interesting to me because you know, I'm Zimbabwean. And that is likely why I read this book so ardently. I, like many first-get immigrants, can barely speak my native tongue, it eludes me, though paradoxically, I can understand it fine. So, I am always searching for the connection, being pulled toward a home that is mine in name though I don't actually know it, and this book touched on so many experiences that I live: black, female, Zimbabwean, that I had to read it. I felt almost demanded to.
Now my experience with my own blackness-- honestly my experience with my own personhood has been fairly summarized in a lot of the passages.
"The black-embodied person is always faced with the spectre of, and lives the experience daily in a myriad of ways of being not-white."
This fact is something I was confronted with when I started school in Canada, succinctly my first school memory is the kids in kindergarten not playing with me, and when I had finally gotten the nerve to ask them why, inviting them to my side of the room (because they always were on the complete opposite SIDE of the room than I was) they informed me that they wouldn't play with me because I was black. I was young, I was in kindergarten, so instead of outrage, instead of unfairness, I understood. Or I tried to, in the way that kids try to understand all the new laws of the world. Red mixes with Blue to make purple, The letter 'X' is two crossing lines, and white children don't play with black children. It was simple in my mind then, the other kids were white and they didn't play with black kids, which I was. I do remember a feeling a resignation which is too mature of a feeling for a maybe 5 year old to have, but I didn't put up a fight, I didn't ask any questions. I went to back to my side of the room and started colouring. And this experience wasn't singular, and as I grew the ways in which I was forced to confront my not-white-ness matured with me. I couldn't escape it, not in books were there were never black characters at the forefront, not in school where I was either the only black school in my class or in my grade (all the way moved schools for high school) my entire existence seemed rooted in otherhood.
"Feminist theory showed me how I was constructed as a female person whose content and possibility was predetermined, and how my refusal to occupy that space was a form of rebellion, albeit a powerless one that simply confirmed the lack that society inscribed into me. It was this time that I began to experience a real hunger for representation that affirmed who I was, or rather who I felt myself to be, rather than who I had been formed to be."
I discovered my rage against the patriarchy and my not-whiteness both young and congruently. And in the same manner as quoted I found myself craving, almost desperate, for representation. Yet the realization that BIPOC face when accept the idea of systematic discrimination is a double-edged dagger.
"On the one side, they seek to dissociate themselves from the torment caused by racist constructions of the world, in order not to necessitate engaging in wrenching questions about their own human worth. On the other, they endeavour to bolster a sense of their human value by adopting a position of non-racialism that denies the existence and effects of racist systems sometimes in historical but particularly in contemporary society."
There becomes two options for BIPOC, 1. either accept that there is a system in place predisposed against us, and one in which fundamentally and irrevocably we are found lacking, as said by Dangarembga "quasi-human". Or, 2. deny there is any system in place at all; preserving our personhood from the implications of the former, but not saving us from the effects of systematic discrimination which is indeed present *see the disproportionate incarceration of black embodied people, see police brutality, see the missing and unaccounted for indigenous women, see so many other examples, or just watch the news.
Both seem a little in incorrigible, and in any case by now you may be wondering what is the point of all these realizations. Colonialism is bad, the patriarchy is bad but then what. Are we supposed to cry? Go home and sob the tears of disenfranchisement? I asked myself these questions as I read, because I've found increasingly I am a "So what?" person. Colonialism is bad so what? Where do we go from there?
"Those who, like me, were wounded by the hubris of white-ness no longer say, "I hurt," and self medicate in self-destructive ways, or act out in ruinous, enraged and bitter pain on our communities, as that hubris demanded. Today we say, 'You hurt me,' words that point not to the abjection and death that follow relentless self-mutilation, but to the possibility of removing oneself from the one who hurts, and thereafter transforming oneself into someone the one who hurts can no longer dismember."
The former excerpt goes on to articulate itself even more profoundly but the take away is there. So What? You ask: So we do not get hurt in this way again, so we know how to protect ourselves from what has happened in the past and therefore protect all those who will come after. But I want to be so unflinchingly clear. Whiteness here is whiteness as institution not personhood.
This collection of essays is only meant to serve as a taste test of discussions of CPW, and what an enlightening taste it was.
5 stars!! Because I mean obvi I loved this.
edit**
If I could sum up this collections of essays in two words they would be "I hurt."And I don't mean that this book has been so poignant that I hurt, rather I am identifying a preexisting wound, articulating the collective symptoms this book has helped me diagnose as disease.
The implications of colonialism, the patriarchy, and whiteness have been discussed enough I mistakenly thought I could recognize the symptoms of them in my life. I have never shied away from discussion of any of the three, one might argue I actively seek them. And yet I never really knew the roots, especially as a Zimbabwean, that CPW (colonialism, the patriarchy and whiteness) branched from.
Tsitsi Dangarembga is a celebrated Zimbabwean, author, playwright, director, and feminist. One of the things that was stressed in the essays, specifically Black, Female and the Superwoman Black Feminist is that there are different types of feminism. The two main types referenced are 'black feminism' and 'western feminism'. Of course, black here has less to do with the conditions typically perceived with blackness, that to say it is blackness as location rather than personhood. And while us feminists in the west, are inundated with causes that focus on fighting against the capitalist patriarchal system in such a way that rewards are redistributed, black feminists, and quite frankly all feminists in developing countries are trying to "imagine a new world that has not been seen before."
In these places it is better to be an external feminist than an internal one, supporting policies that open the gates for women, though not agreeing outright/ supporting the feminist cause. Because in these places feminists are exiled, ostracized, refused work, and occasionally silenced. There is no system of fairness to fall back on, no courts who will hear that your manager groped you, that a man touched your chest on a walk through to the market. At least, the system is not half as supportive as it should be. So it is better to keep your head low, it is pragmatic even, which makes the work of these feminists all the more admirable. They are not fighting for redistribution: they are fighting for creation.
And these instances of groping, leering, and general uncomfortableness is something that is unfortunately a universal experience for women, hence the 97% statistic (one which states that 97% of women will face some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime.) Womanhood, especially as a POC is articulated so aptly by Dangarembga.
"At the same time I learnt comforting, tidy rules of writing, I began my menses. There had been hints before that something ominous would inevitably happen: don't sit like that; don't be so strident; don't talk back like that; go and cook- these were all admonishments directed at me and not my brother."
This description of burgeoning womanhood being something ominous, both alien and something to be afraid of just by the way younger girls are warned/ chastised about their behaviour is something so embedded and normalized I didn't even know it was something to articulate. In school systems girls have more stringent dress code rules than their boy counterparts do, and I grew up constantly warned about my behaviour; that sitting this way was unwomanly, doing xx was a girl's responsibility. And of course this being just another symptom of disease.
And what I loved even more about this collection of essays is that while it traced back the historical roots of colonialism in Zimbabwe, from Cecil Rhodes, to Ian Smith, and the ZANU PF etc. it also alludes to the social and cultural significance that women held prior to colonialism, and that before Zimbabwe was taken by the British, gendered roles were very much a thing. Of course, I wouldn't say having gendered roles is something unique to any culture, especially if you delve back deep enough, but I think its important to acknowledge that the roots of the patriarchy extend further back than colonialism, and that colonialism isn't synonymous with the 'start' of life in any African country.
Dangarembga is again, someone who wears many hats, and in fact non-fiction writing isn't the first medium she gravitates towards, and this is something I thought made her collection so accessible and hard-hitting. Any experience she described was presented in the most artful and digestible prose. But she was never superfluous. The hardest essay to read was likely the intro, but that was because I am a fiction lover at heart, and that first essay/intro was about strict the history of Zimbabwe. But since it was Zimbabwe it was still interesting to me because you know, I'm Zimbabwean. And that is likely why I read this book so ardently. I, like many first-get immigrants, can barely speak my native tongue, it eludes me, though paradoxically, I can understand it fine. So, I am always searching for the connection, being pulled toward a home that is mine in name though I don't actually know it, and this book touched on so many experiences that I live: black, female, Zimbabwean, that I had to read it. I felt almost demanded to.
Now my experience with my own blackness-- honestly my experience with my own personhood has been fairly summarized in a lot of the passages.
"The black-embodied person is always faced with the spectre of, and lives the experience daily in a myriad of ways of being not-white."
This fact is something I was confronted with when I started school in Canada, succinctly my first school memory is the kids in kindergarten not playing with me, and when I had finally gotten the nerve to ask them why, inviting them to my side of the room (because they always were on the complete opposite SIDE of the room than I was) they informed me that they wouldn't play with me because I was black. I was young, I was in kindergarten, so instead of outrage, instead of unfairness, I understood. Or I tried to, in the way that kids try to understand all the new laws of the world. Red mixes with Blue to make purple, The letter 'X' is two crossing lines, and white children don't play with black children. It was simple in my mind then, the other kids were white and they didn't play with black kids, which I was. I do remember a feeling a resignation which is too mature of a feeling for a maybe 5 year old to have, but I didn't put up a fight, I didn't ask any questions. I went to back to my side of the room and started colouring. And this experience wasn't singular, and as I grew the ways in which I was forced to confront my not-white-ness matured with me. I couldn't escape it, not in books were there were never black characters at the forefront, not in school where I was either the only black school in my class or in my grade (all the way moved schools for high school) my entire existence seemed rooted in otherhood.
"Feminist theory showed me how I was constructed as a female person whose content and possibility was predetermined, and how my refusal to occupy that space was a form of rebellion, albeit a powerless one that simply confirmed the lack that society inscribed into me. It was this time that I began to experience a real hunger for representation that affirmed who I was, or rather who I felt myself to be, rather than who I had been formed to be."
I discovered my rage against the patriarchy and my not-whiteness both young and congruently. And in the same manner as quoted I found myself craving, almost desperate, for representation. Yet the realization that BIPOC face when accept the idea of systematic discrimination is a double-edged dagger.
"On the one side, they seek to dissociate themselves from the torment caused by racist constructions of the world, in order not to necessitate engaging in wrenching questions about their own human worth. On the other, they endeavour to bolster a sense of their human value by adopting a position of non-racialism that denies the existence and effects of racist systems sometimes in historical but particularly in contemporary society."
There becomes two options for BIPOC, 1. either accept that there is a system in place predisposed against us, and one in which fundamentally and irrevocably we are found lacking, as said by Dangarembga "quasi-human". Or, 2. deny there is any system in place at all; preserving our personhood from the implications of the former, but not saving us from the effects of systematic discrimination which is indeed present *see the disproportionate incarceration of black embodied people, see police brutality, see the missing and unaccounted for indigenous women, see so many other examples, or just watch the news.
Both seem a little in incorrigible, and in any case by now you may be wondering what is the point of all these realizations. Colonialism is bad, the patriarchy is bad but then what. Are we supposed to cry? Go home and sob the tears of disenfranchisement? I asked myself these questions as I read, because I've found increasingly I am a "So what?" person. Colonialism is bad so what? Where do we go from there?
"Those who, like me, were wounded by the hubris of white-ness no longer say, "I hurt," and self medicate in self-destructive ways, or act out in ruinous, enraged and bitter pain on our communities, as that hubris demanded. Today we say, 'You hurt me,' words that point not to the abjection and death that follow relentless self-mutilation, but to the possibility of removing oneself from the one who hurts, and thereafter transforming oneself into someone the one who hurts can no longer dismember."
The former excerpt goes on to articulate itself even more profoundly but the take away is there. So What? You ask: So we do not get hurt in this way again, so we know how to protect ourselves from what has happened in the past and therefore protect all those who will come after. But I want to be so unflinchingly clear. Whiteness here is whiteness as institution not personhood.
This collection of essays is only meant to serve as a taste test of discussions of CPW, and what an enlightening taste it was.
5 stars!! Because I mean obvi I loved this.
January 11, 2026
Black and Female features three essays by Tsitsi Dangarembga: "Writing While Black and Female", "Black, Female and the Superwoman Black Feminist" and "Decolonisation as Revolutionary Imagining".
I hadn't read anything of Dangarembga's prior to this, but I am aware of her legacy and importance. Tsitsi Dangarembga's debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), as the first novel to be published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe. Last year, I bought a copy and put Black and Female in my shopping card as well because it sounded interesting and I love a good nonfiction.
Unfortunately, this book of essays didn't do much for me. I didn't find any essay particularly insightful and couldn't shake the feeling that Dangarembga's thoughts were kind of all over the place. I did appreciate learning a little bit about herself, especially her experience in the foster care system growing up, but I assume that this is not her best work. As this is her nonfiction debut, this seems very likely. As Nervous Conditions is on my TBR, I still look forward to reading it because I assume her fiction work is much better.
Dangarembga completed her A-Levels at Arundel School, an elite, predominantly white girls' school in the capital, Salisbury (today Harare), and in 1977 went to the University of Cambridge to study medicine at Sidney Sussex College. There, she experienced racism and isolation and left after three years, returning in 1980 to Zimbabwe several months before the country's independence.
Dangarembga worked briefly as a teacher, before taking up studies in medicine and psychology at the University of Zimbabwe while working for two years as a copywriter at a marketing agency. She wrote three plays during this period: Lost of the Soil (1983), She No Longer Weeps, and The Third One. In 1988, her first novel, Nervous Conditions, was published.
It's important to know this context before diving into Black and Female, as Dangaremga references her past but doesn't give you the complete run-down. In the first essay (the strongest of the three!), "Writing While Black and Female", Dangarembga examines what it is like to write as a Black woman. Dangarembga similarly notes that it is through silence that the destructive legacy of empire is perpetuated. When the victim speaks, points to where they are in pain and indicates who has caused it, they find space for healing: "Through writing, I cultivate my being to bring forth forests that replenish our depleted humanity." "Empire could not bear to hear our screams because it knew it caused them." In 1977, Audre Lorde made this exact same argument in her talk "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" from which the popular quote "Your silence cannot protect you." stems. So Dangarembga's thoughts on this matter don't feel particularly original or new.
Dangarembga understood the power of words from a young age. When she and her brother were taken from Zimbabwe to England, they were forced to stay in a foster home while their parents worked and studied. It was an experience that "sliced her in two", leaving her with a "never-ending emptiness". In the midst of powerlessness, words were a way of regaining agency. She wrote a diary as a teenager, and gradually began to think more seriously about the narratives she wove: "With words I could do things. I could make good what was no more. Then perhaps I could bind the things that mattered to me with words and not experience their loss. I could beat the nameless things that sharpened the guillotine and came for me after I was tucked into bed." "Writing assures me that I am more than merely blackness and femaleness. Writing assures me that I am."
Though writing helped her process what was happening to her, she initially struggled to place her own life at the centre of her work. There was no significant black female character in her first play. This changed once she became more involved in feminist activism at the University of Zimbabwe, at which she enrolled shortly after independence. It was then that she was able to recognise the pervasive "pressures on me to not be myself, but to stand in for something else". Revolutionary literature that glorified the struggle for independence was the order of the day – few "were concerned with the individual personhood of young black Zimbabwean girls". Nervous Conditions struggled to find a publisher in Zimbabwe and was eventually taken on by a small feminist press in the UK.
The collection includes two other essays: "Black, Female and the Superwoman Black Feminist", sweeping sociopolitical history of Zimbabwean women, and "Decolonisation as Revolutionary Imagining", an examination of Zimbabwe's project of decolonisation, which, Dangarembga stresses, did not end with independence.
In the latter, she shows with painstaking clarity, how the political elite has betrayed her countrymen. She argues that activists must also decolonise how we produce and share knowledge, and how we see ourselves. She describes blackness as "condition imposed on me, rather than being … experienced". For Dangarembga, it is a political identity that has little to do with colour, but rather with the common experiences black people endure. She continues: "Other melanated people became complicit," in upholding the structures of the empire. "Such complicity may be conscious or unconscious … melanated people are often rewarded for their acquiescence to the demands of a white world with economic elevation, or with other things that are valued in that world, such as social stature."
The final pages of the book are characterised by a fierce urgency. Dangarembga believes the challenges of climate change, immigration and inequality place the world at a crucial juncture. "If the logic of the Enlightenment was racism, slavery, genocide and colonisation, decolonisation is the only logic that offers hope of future," she writes. The task – to uproot a half-a-millennium-old practice – is immense, but "the trajectory of current and future generations depends on that uprooting."
The sentiment is true and I share many of her fears, hopes, and dreams. However, Dangarembga's essays (especially the latter two) remain on the surface level and don't provide any new ideas. I can't say that I was chewing her words, that she was providing food for thought. She stated the obvious, that which we all already know. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I was hoping for something else entirely.
I hadn't read anything of Dangarembga's prior to this, but I am aware of her legacy and importance. Tsitsi Dangarembga's debut novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), as the first novel to be published in English by a Black woman from Zimbabwe. Last year, I bought a copy and put Black and Female in my shopping card as well because it sounded interesting and I love a good nonfiction.
Unfortunately, this book of essays didn't do much for me. I didn't find any essay particularly insightful and couldn't shake the feeling that Dangarembga's thoughts were kind of all over the place. I did appreciate learning a little bit about herself, especially her experience in the foster care system growing up, but I assume that this is not her best work. As this is her nonfiction debut, this seems very likely. As Nervous Conditions is on my TBR, I still look forward to reading it because I assume her fiction work is much better.
I have been in flight since I left the womb, and probably before, given the circumstances I was born into and the effect of these circumstances on my prenatal environment.Tsitsi Dangarembga was born on 4 February 1959 in Mutoko, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), a small town where her parents taught at the nearby mission school. From the ages of two to six, Dangarembga lived in England, while her parents pursued higher education. She returned to Rhodesia with her family in 1965, the year of the colony's Unilateral Declaration of Independence.
Dangarembga completed her A-Levels at Arundel School, an elite, predominantly white girls' school in the capital, Salisbury (today Harare), and in 1977 went to the University of Cambridge to study medicine at Sidney Sussex College. There, she experienced racism and isolation and left after three years, returning in 1980 to Zimbabwe several months before the country's independence.
Dangarembga worked briefly as a teacher, before taking up studies in medicine and psychology at the University of Zimbabwe while working for two years as a copywriter at a marketing agency. She wrote three plays during this period: Lost of the Soil (1983), She No Longer Weeps, and The Third One. In 1988, her first novel, Nervous Conditions, was published.
It's important to know this context before diving into Black and Female, as Dangaremga references her past but doesn't give you the complete run-down. In the first essay (the strongest of the three!), "Writing While Black and Female", Dangarembga examines what it is like to write as a Black woman. Dangarembga similarly notes that it is through silence that the destructive legacy of empire is perpetuated. When the victim speaks, points to where they are in pain and indicates who has caused it, they find space for healing: "Through writing, I cultivate my being to bring forth forests that replenish our depleted humanity." "Empire could not bear to hear our screams because it knew it caused them." In 1977, Audre Lorde made this exact same argument in her talk "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" from which the popular quote "Your silence cannot protect you." stems. So Dangarembga's thoughts on this matter don't feel particularly original or new.
Dangarembga understood the power of words from a young age. When she and her brother were taken from Zimbabwe to England, they were forced to stay in a foster home while their parents worked and studied. It was an experience that "sliced her in two", leaving her with a "never-ending emptiness". In the midst of powerlessness, words were a way of regaining agency. She wrote a diary as a teenager, and gradually began to think more seriously about the narratives she wove: "With words I could do things. I could make good what was no more. Then perhaps I could bind the things that mattered to me with words and not experience their loss. I could beat the nameless things that sharpened the guillotine and came for me after I was tucked into bed." "Writing assures me that I am more than merely blackness and femaleness. Writing assures me that I am."
Though writing helped her process what was happening to her, she initially struggled to place her own life at the centre of her work. There was no significant black female character in her first play. This changed once she became more involved in feminist activism at the University of Zimbabwe, at which she enrolled shortly after independence. It was then that she was able to recognise the pervasive "pressures on me to not be myself, but to stand in for something else". Revolutionary literature that glorified the struggle for independence was the order of the day – few "were concerned with the individual personhood of young black Zimbabwean girls". Nervous Conditions struggled to find a publisher in Zimbabwe and was eventually taken on by a small feminist press in the UK.
The collection includes two other essays: "Black, Female and the Superwoman Black Feminist", sweeping sociopolitical history of Zimbabwean women, and "Decolonisation as Revolutionary Imagining", an examination of Zimbabwe's project of decolonisation, which, Dangarembga stresses, did not end with independence.
In the latter, she shows with painstaking clarity, how the political elite has betrayed her countrymen. She argues that activists must also decolonise how we produce and share knowledge, and how we see ourselves. She describes blackness as "condition imposed on me, rather than being … experienced". For Dangarembga, it is a political identity that has little to do with colour, but rather with the common experiences black people endure. She continues: "Other melanated people became complicit," in upholding the structures of the empire. "Such complicity may be conscious or unconscious … melanated people are often rewarded for their acquiescence to the demands of a white world with economic elevation, or with other things that are valued in that world, such as social stature."
The final pages of the book are characterised by a fierce urgency. Dangarembga believes the challenges of climate change, immigration and inequality place the world at a crucial juncture. "If the logic of the Enlightenment was racism, slavery, genocide and colonisation, decolonisation is the only logic that offers hope of future," she writes. The task – to uproot a half-a-millennium-old practice – is immense, but "the trajectory of current and future generations depends on that uprooting."
The sentiment is true and I share many of her fears, hopes, and dreams. However, Dangarembga's essays (especially the latter two) remain on the surface level and don't provide any new ideas. I can't say that I was chewing her words, that she was providing food for thought. She stated the obvious, that which we all already know. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I was hoping for something else entirely.
December 26, 2022
Writing while black and female.
Black female and the superwoman black feminist.
Decolonisation as revolutionary imagining.
Tsitsi Dangarembga boldly writes the unfortunate social, political and economic straits that the black African woman faced in the colonial era, linking it with the repressive structural ideologies that limit the black African woman from reaching their true extent of their personal power.
Tsitsi is unashamed of how she embraces black activism feminism and calls out the codification of it that is used to tick boxes for political correctness.
I would consider this a book that should not just be left on 'read' but used as part of the discursive products to deconstruct cognitive affective systems, that are are complicit to routinely systematic racism that the black African woman and in general the melanated people face.
I would love to read more on the stories of royal spirit mediums and warriors in the pre colonial Zimbabwe that Tsisti highlights in this book.
"Knowledge that is founded on notions of inequality will build unequal words for humans to occupy and unequal systems for us to function in." Tsitsi Dangarembga.
Black female and the superwoman black feminist.
Decolonisation as revolutionary imagining.
Tsitsi Dangarembga boldly writes the unfortunate social, political and economic straits that the black African woman faced in the colonial era, linking it with the repressive structural ideologies that limit the black African woman from reaching their true extent of their personal power.
Tsitsi is unashamed of how she embraces black activism feminism and calls out the codification of it that is used to tick boxes for political correctness.
I would consider this a book that should not just be left on 'read' but used as part of the discursive products to deconstruct cognitive affective systems, that are are complicit to routinely systematic racism that the black African woman and in general the melanated people face.
I would love to read more on the stories of royal spirit mediums and warriors in the pre colonial Zimbabwe that Tsisti highlights in this book.
"Knowledge that is founded on notions of inequality will build unequal words for humans to occupy and unequal systems for us to function in." Tsitsi Dangarembga.
September 20, 2024
Tsitsi Dangarembga tackles empire and colonialism, with its seemingly endless tentacles in a direct and compassionate collection of essays. As a Zimbabwean woman, this book structured the historical, political, and social forces which create our Black and Female personhood.
‘I am an existential refugee. I have been in flight since I left the womb, and probably before, given the circumstances I was born into and the effect of these circumstances on my prenatal environment.’
Through each essay, Dangarembga pieces out how the macro events have structured our micro existences. A great read for those interested in feminism, history, decolonisation, and race.
‘I am an existential refugee. I have been in flight since I left the womb, and probably before, given the circumstances I was born into and the effect of these circumstances on my prenatal environment.’
Through each essay, Dangarembga pieces out how the macro events have structured our micro existences. A great read for those interested in feminism, history, decolonisation, and race.
September 29, 2022
Listened to the audiobook via Borrowbox.
The Details:
Narrated by Chipo Chung
Unabridged
A fantastic insight to not only Dangarembga's upbringing as she begun to see herself as other from her Foster family and children she went to school with, but also some really in dept information on the racial and sexist politics, particularly in South Africa.
A great collection of essays. I do enjoy when authors blend memoir and journal writing or essay pondering together. It often creates a stunning outcome.
Pick it up, give it a go and enjoy! >(^_^)<
Gén
The Details:
Narrated by Chipo Chung
Unabridged
A fantastic insight to not only Dangarembga's upbringing as she begun to see herself as other from her Foster family and children she went to school with, but also some really in dept information on the racial and sexist politics, particularly in South Africa.
A great collection of essays. I do enjoy when authors blend memoir and journal writing or essay pondering together. It often creates a stunning outcome.
Pick it up, give it a go and enjoy! >(^_^)<
Gén
October 6, 2024
a brilliant collection of essays on womanhood, feminism, racism, decolonisation, which is to say intersectionality. her metaphor of empire being a guillotine and then ending the essay with "Through words I raise the blade of the guillotine, reach for the dismembered parts, and rejoin them to the rest of my being, while the monster of empire practised through patriarchy snaps at my heels"!
March 17, 2023
3.5
Guter Einblick in die Geschichte Simbabwes und die Lebensrealitäten einer schwarzen Frau. Dangarembga ist Autorin, oft geht es dann auch um ihre Werke, dann wieder um politischen Umbruch, irgendwie hat mir ein bisschen Struktur gefehlt. Trotzdem interessant!
Guter Einblick in die Geschichte Simbabwes und die Lebensrealitäten einer schwarzen Frau. Dangarembga ist Autorin, oft geht es dann auch um ihre Werke, dann wieder um politischen Umbruch, irgendwie hat mir ein bisschen Struktur gefehlt. Trotzdem interessant!
January 23, 2023
Really enjoyed this and learned lots, my favourite essay was the second one about the patriarchy (shock).
December 10, 2023
’ Een feministe die zwart en vrouw is in Zimbabwe, leeft in het epicentrum van structureel racisme en een brutaal gemilitariseerd patriarchaat dat alle belangrijke staatsinstellingen geheel of gedeeltelijk heeft overgenomen.’
Door de essays in Zwart en vrouw leer je Tsitsi Dangarembga, de schrijver van het prachtige Nervous Conditions (onlangs opnieuw verschenen in het Nederlands als Toestanden beter kennen. Ze schrijft over haar jeugd, de (koloniale) geschiedenis van Zimbabwe en wat het betekent om zwart en feminist te zijn.
Door de essays in Zwart en vrouw leer je Tsitsi Dangarembga, de schrijver van het prachtige Nervous Conditions (onlangs opnieuw verschenen in het Nederlands als Toestanden beter kennen. Ze schrijft over haar jeugd, de (koloniale) geschiedenis van Zimbabwe en wat het betekent om zwart en feminist te zijn.
Read
February 7, 2024Written in such a powerful voice, Black and Female was both educational and moving. Glad I picked this one up.
September 30, 2023
4,5
Fikk lyst til å lese hele resten av forfatterskapet asap. Aller sterkest når den personlig (jeg faller litt av i de historiske delene)
Fikk lyst til å lese hele resten av forfatterskapet asap. Aller sterkest når den personlig (jeg faller litt av i de historiske delene)
December 31, 2022
I appreciate that it was bite size history that focused on how colonialism, racism and patrichary impacted and still impacts Tsitsi Dangarembga throughout her life, how she moves through the world and how the world perceives her. I was hoping it was more on how writing has been her safe space and a place where she makes sense of the world. Maybe it was and I instead focused more on the histories she touched on. I don't know. I just know that I appreciate Tsitsi Dangarembga so much and it makes me sad to be reminded of being Black and existing in a female body in a world that refuses to recognize as anything but human. Crazy.
December 16, 2022
“The first wound for all of us who are classified as ‘black’ is empire. This is a truth many of us – whether we are included in that category or not – prefer to avoid. Today, the wounding empire is that of the western nations: the empire that covered more than 80% of the globe at its zenith in the 19th century. It includes the British empire that colonised my country Zimbabwe in the 1890s. I was born into empire: my parents were products of empire, as were their parents before them, and their parents before that, my great-grandparents.”
January 5, 2023
Tsitsi makes you very cognisant of the fact that the double jeopardy of being black and female didn’t start yesterday but does so in a way that reminds you that you’re not alone in fighting against systems that continue to subjugate you. Loved it so much and I appreciate starting my year with it.
January 22, 2023
Powerful essays from a black feminist living amongst the effects of the Zimbabwe Revolution
March 7, 2023
Short but concise insights into colonialism, race, Feminism, culture, class from a Zimbabwean author; which also introduced to some of its history and politics.
February 3, 2023
In true Tsitsi style, the opening line to this collection is gripping: “I am an existential refugee.”
What a poignant reflection of the continuing and pervasive effects of the Empire on the Black body and more traumatically, the Black woman body.
It is beautifully and painfully reflective; effectively didactic as well as deeply personal. Tsitsi let’s us in on how her entire existence has been moulded by a medley of systemic oppressions and weaves this narrative through Zimbabwean history.
I was particularly drawn to the second essay: Black, Female and the Superwoman Black Feminist. Tsitsi makes important commentary about the role of black feminism as a framework upon which total freedom for all marginalised groups is built. Particularly in juxtaposition to white feminism. She paints a picture of pre- and post-colonial patriarchy in black families and structures.
I cannot recommend this book enough!
What a poignant reflection of the continuing and pervasive effects of the Empire on the Black body and more traumatically, the Black woman body.
It is beautifully and painfully reflective; effectively didactic as well as deeply personal. Tsitsi let’s us in on how her entire existence has been moulded by a medley of systemic oppressions and weaves this narrative through Zimbabwean history.
I was particularly drawn to the second essay: Black, Female and the Superwoman Black Feminist. Tsitsi makes important commentary about the role of black feminism as a framework upon which total freedom for all marginalised groups is built. Particularly in juxtaposition to white feminism. She paints a picture of pre- and post-colonial patriarchy in black families and structures.
I cannot recommend this book enough!
April 13, 2025
I had the pleasure of hearing Tsitsi Dangarembga speak at this year's installment of Literatur im Nebel, where she was the guest of honor, and she is really inspiring. As is her work.
In Black and female she writes about her experience with being not only black and female but postcolonial as well and how she is proud of the fact and has celebrated success despite of it. Overall, the text is thought-provoking and brilliant.
—> 4 stars
In Black and female she writes about her experience with being not only black and female but postcolonial as well and how she is proud of the fact and has celebrated success despite of it. Overall, the text is thought-provoking and brilliant.
—> 4 stars
October 20, 2022
This collection contains 3 essays. The first focuses on the author as a writer, the second on the author as a black woman and the final on the author as a decolonised person living in a previously colonised country. It is absolutely beautifully written and with the usual dangaremba precision. My absolute favourite was the introduction and the first essay that is essentially an autobiography through the lens of how she became an author. Frightfully good!!
January 13, 2023
Graywolf Press is reissuing this, and I got it as part of their galley club, and have been reading it on my commute. These essays end up being a discussion of colonialism as Ms. Dangarembga has experienced it through her writing career and as a child who was fostered briefly in England, and being a woman in all of these contexts. Excellent writing and some fucking fascinating stories. Definitely worth a read.
February 5, 2023
Well written but jumps around a lot with dates lacking a clear timeline of racism in society
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 25, 2025
Ich bin ohne große Erwartungen an dieses Hörbuch herangegangen und wurde absolut begeistert. Tsitsi Dangarembga schafft es, die Geschichte Simbabwes, insbesondere die Unabhängigkeitsbestrebungen, prägnant und dennoch spannend zu skizzieren. Ihre Erzählweise verbindet historische Fakten mit persönlichen Erfahrungen, was das Buch umso eindrücklicher macht.
Ein besonders bewegendes Kapitel war für mich die Schilderung, dass afrikanische Kinder zeitweise als Pflegekinder an englische Familien „verliehen“ wurden. Mir war nicht bewusst, welche tiefgreifenden Auswirkungen dies auf die betroffenen Kinder hatte. Die persönlichen Erlebnisse der Autorin machen die abstrakten Themen von Kolonialismus und sozialer Ungerechtigkeit greifbar und verdeutlichen, wie sehr die Vergangenheit bis in die Gegenwart nachwirkt.
Dangarembga spricht nicht nur über die Unterdrückung durch koloniale Strukturen, sondern auch über die doppelte Diskriminierung Schwarzer Frauen – durch patriarchale Systeme und weiße Dominanz. Ihre Analyse ist unbequem, aber umso wichtiger. Das Hörbuch ist eine kraftvolle Einladung zur Reflexion und eröffnet neue Perspektiven auf Themen, die oft übersehen werden. Wer sich für postkoloniale Geschichte und soziale Gerechtigkeit interessiert, sollte es sich nicht entgehen lassen.
Ein besonders bewegendes Kapitel war für mich die Schilderung, dass afrikanische Kinder zeitweise als Pflegekinder an englische Familien „verliehen“ wurden. Mir war nicht bewusst, welche tiefgreifenden Auswirkungen dies auf die betroffenen Kinder hatte. Die persönlichen Erlebnisse der Autorin machen die abstrakten Themen von Kolonialismus und sozialer Ungerechtigkeit greifbar und verdeutlichen, wie sehr die Vergangenheit bis in die Gegenwart nachwirkt.
Dangarembga spricht nicht nur über die Unterdrückung durch koloniale Strukturen, sondern auch über die doppelte Diskriminierung Schwarzer Frauen – durch patriarchale Systeme und weiße Dominanz. Ihre Analyse ist unbequem, aber umso wichtiger. Das Hörbuch ist eine kraftvolle Einladung zur Reflexion und eröffnet neue Perspektiven auf Themen, die oft übersehen werden. Wer sich für postkoloniale Geschichte und soziale Gerechtigkeit interessiert, sollte es sich nicht entgehen lassen.
May 5, 2023
"Ik ben een existentiële vluchteling." Dit is de eerste zin van het boek "Zwart en Vrouw" van de Zimbabwaanse schrijver Tsitsi Dangarembga. Deze pakkende opening maakte me nieuwsgierig naar meer, maar ergens onderweg doofde die nieuwsgierigheid uit. Het boek gaat over verschillende vormen van onderdrukking van 'mensen met melanine' zoals Dangarembga mensen met een donkere huidskleur bij voorkeur noemt, die zich nog afspeelt naast de onderdrukking als vrouw en als zwarte Afrikaanse vrouw en de koloniale en patriarchale machtsstructuren die dit in stand houden. Dit is op zich genoeg om interessant te zijn, maar ondanks dat het boek dun is, vind ik de auteur toch soms te breedsprakig. Haar betoog wordt zo een beetje een bomen en bos verhaal, waarbij de auteur zichzelf bovendien verschillende keren herhaalt. Ik heb het een heel eind gelezen, maar uiteindelijk niet uitgelezen.
May 4, 2025
“Certain women are elevated to privilege in our patriarchal societies. These are the ones who conform to their subjugation. The mechanism works at all levels of society. Elite women are often used as examples for the rest of female society as to how women should acquiesce to gendered constructions of power, the argument being that a woman can still be successful from a position of subordination to men.”
Remarkable book, a must read for understanding decolonial perspectives.
Remarkable book, a must read for understanding decolonial perspectives.
August 1, 2025
收录了Tsitsi的三篇文章，围绕种族、性别、写作、去殖民化这四个主题来写，简短深刻，部分内容可以看作她“Nervous Conditions Series”的历史与思想背景补充。书里提到了非洲哲学概念ubuntu，它在父权殖民背景下对女性的压制路径，我觉得跟儒家有种微妙的相似。她从黑人女性的角度，批判了帝国的殖民主义和（津巴布韦）国家化共产主义倡导的阶级斗争——这些在《The Book of Not》里也有体现，书里其它相关内容（比如质疑国家女权主义）也挺能共鸣的…读到最后，她提到“从认知-情感维度重建我们的现实，重视想象的话语”，我因《The Book of Not》而破碎的心慢慢拼在一起。
July 24, 2025
#全球作家阅读计划# 之津巴布韦。Nervous condition作者的文集，讲述她作为津巴布韦黑人女性在非洲和英国/帝国影响下的成长、对自我的认识过程、职业选择等等。内容和我的知识范围比较贴合，所以读起来没什么难度（听闻她的小说挺难读懂的？）关于政治方面/执政党对女性议题的做法和我的经历挺相似的，完全能懂她说的；比较启发我的是她在对于白男白女的描述，之前也有听到黑人女权主义者表达困惑分离主义是否是对黑人身份的背叛等等，这里作者的描述让我意识到可以关注黑人女性、关注女性+黑人/少数族裔，并以此作为核心，而不是关注需要排斥哪些群体。
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