Global Women Writers: Historical Contexts

Colonialism in Zimbabwe

Tsitsi's Nervous Condition is based on her experience in Zimbabwe due to Colonialism as well as Gender roles. However, I wanted to focus on the colonization of Zimbabwe and it's effects. 

The colonialism of Zimbabwe led to the integration of the English language as well as building schools to teach English history as well as the language. However, colonization often causes a loss of original language as well as the history of the area being forgotten. Abbas calls the colonization of Zimbabwe, "a colonial system that's damaging and dangerous, but still attractive in important ways for individuals who wish to abandon traditional ways of doing things in favor of a white and Western definition of success" (Paragraph 1). We often see in the text when Tambu has to deal with, not only the aftermath left by the English settlers, but also the change in her tone when referring to the settlers. We also see the condition of the land that she is living on is sandy and hard to harm on, limiting Tambu and her family's source of income. It also shows Tambu's difficulty in farming corn to help pay for her schooling. The overall presence of the colonizers helps contribute to the reason that Tsitsi wrote this account, pairing this with the gender inequality that Tsitsi also faced, and we can see the summery of Nervous Conditions.

          Abbas, Fatin. "Nervous Conditions Themes: Colonialism." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 10 Jan 2019. Web. 26 Feb 2026.
 

Tsitsi's (Tambu's) experience with Nyasha's suicidal behavior.

The colonization of Zimbabwe not only affected those colonized in terms of culture, socialization, dress, and more, but it also affected mental states. A great example of this could be Tambu's interactions with Nyasha.

During Tambu's dive into studies and refusal to leave besides her interactions at school, Nyasha sends her letters expressing her emotions with a particular one admitting that Nyasha was not fitting in well with the other students at the school. Tambu sees this more when she returns home to see Nyasha is such a malnourished state. When Nyasha is shown to enter a suicidal state, Tambu urged for Babamukuru to take Nyasha to a white psychiatrist. However, the psychiatrist brushes the issue off by saying, “Africans did not suffer in the way [he] … described.”

This showcases, the neglect for not only the state of living of the people in the colony, but also the lack of mental care that was provided to them. Tsitsi shows this to help attribute to the distain she felt towards the colonizers and her own neglect towards her cousin. 

Work cited

DayDreamin’ Comics. “Write up on Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions.” DayDreamin’ Comics, 3 May 2025, https://ddcomics.org/2025/05/03/write-up-on-tsitsi-dangarembgas-nervous….

The Significance of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Life Abroad

When Tsitsi Dangarembga was a toddler, her family moved from South Rhodesia, present-day Zimbabwe, to London so that her parents could pursue the benefits of higher education that London offered (George et al. 309). During her time in London, Dangarembga learned English, and later on in Cambridge, she learned the value of education, and about the racial and gendered divide in educational settings. This gave Dangarembga an exterior perspective of both South Rhodesia and the Western world which prompted the creation of Nervous Conditions to shine a light on her native cultures’ perspective of European education versus cultural values, during a period of civil war for freedom from colonization. 

            Dangarembga’s stay in London is important to Nervous Conditions as her experiences give particular insight to Babamukuru’s family structure, and the differences between life in London versus life in the countryside of Rhodesia. Dangarembga could be compared to Nyasha in that she was the child of educated Zimbabwean parents who was encouraged to pursue her own education. But Dangarembga also compares to Tambu through her admiration for her native culture. Both perspectives show Dangarembga’s personal theory that the desire for liberation, “has been a problem for some young women of my generation who needed some kind of liberating theory to guide us, and then it was good, at that time, to have the Western theories there” (George et. al. 315). This dual perspective, that aligns with both main female characters of the novel, in key ways, gives Dangarembga the necessary information to display both the educated and the native perspectives of South Rhodesia in the mid-1900’s. 

Works Cited

George, Rosemary Marangoly, Scott, Helen, and Tsitsi Dangarembga. “An Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 26.3 (1993), 309–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/1345839. 

Freedom From Colonization and Nervous Conditions

The Rhodesian Bush War, that lasted from July 1964 to December 1979, is a significant event that provided historical context to Tsitsi Dangarembga when writing Nervous Conditions because the war prompted the end to the colonization of South Rhodesia. This freedom from colonization gave South Rhodesians freedom to express their native values without the pressure to confirm to Western ideology. Though this freedom brought countrywide healing, the remnants of colonization were still felt in the form of education.

            This aligns with Nervous Conditions as it is set within the timeframe of the war, on the cusp of freedom. Dangarembga demonstrates this through Nyasha’s “rebellion” when she was “going through a historical phase” (Dangarembga 141).  By framing Nyasha’s interest in the world as a rebellion against her native culture, Dangarembga connected Nervous Conditions to the real-life events of the time and showed that Nyasha’s desire for knowledge was her way of gaining a sense of herself in the changing world. In this way, Dangarembga presents education as a valuable tool for her countrymen, by asserting that education about the current situations in their country could help them heal from the ideology that colonization enforced. Rufus Ruth Livingston Jakki and Dr. B. Chandra Shekar describe this healing as “sporadic, fragmented, and primarily symbolic. It is not depicted as a chronological or comprehensive process, but rather as an attempt to restore voice and agency” (3), to demonstrate how Dangarembga presents education as a force that would give the Rhodesians their individual native culture back. 

Works Cited

Dangarembga, Tsitsi. Nervous Conditions. London: Women's Press Limited, 1988. Print.

Jakki, Rufus Ruth Livingston and Dr. B. Chandra Shekar. "Survival, Resistance, and Healing in Tsitsi." International Journal for Multidisciplinary Research 7.2 (2025): 1-4. https://www.ijfmr.com/papers/2025/2/41374.pdf.

ENGL A396 runs spring 2026

Global Women Writers runs as a course!