Black and Female: taking on the patriarchy, in all its forms

“I was born ... into a vicious society that constructed me as essentially lacking full humanity,” writes acclaimed Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga. That society is Southern Rhodesia of the early 1960s — a “self-governing” British colony two decades from independence as Zimbabwe — and the qualities that position her as “subhuman” provide the book’s title: Black and Female.

To Dangarembga, continuing black female suffering is “the metaphysical equivalent of a phantom limb”, resulting from a violent, patriarchal British colonial project. She is at her best when examining that project’s historical features and contemporary ramifications. With some pertinent quotations, she rightly locates the birth of modern white supremacy in Enlightenment thinking. (Take Kant’s assertion that “humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of the whites”, or Locke’s theory that black people “were the product of African women sleeping with apes”).

Also worthwhile is her comparison of the more rigid, British colonial patriarchy with Zimbabwean “kinship” patriarchy, the latter of which granted power to women in certain familial positions. Yet Dangarembga is far from naive regarding the feminist credentials of Zimbabwean nationalist movements. Both Zanu-PF, the nationalist party led for many years by Robert Mugabe, and “NGO feminists” garner sharp criticism for their “performative” activism.

It’s rare to find such candour in contemporary accounts of bad literary behaviour

Closer to home is Dangarembga’s consideration of racism in literary cultures. As the first black female novelist from Zimbabwe to be published in English, she is well-placed to speak on the matter. It’s rare to find such candour in contemporary accounts of bad literary behaviour: most writers prefer to keep on the right side of publishers, and Dangarembga’s honesty and clear-sightedness is to her credit.

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Less convincing, however, are some significant generalisations about the British Empire. When Dangarembga states, “the history of Ireland tells us how ... imperial gifts were bestowed on white people too” , she risks erasing the important differences between British colonial relationships with Irish and African communities, respectively. Similarly, we wonder at the unreconstructed statements describing her early childhood: “I realised I was powerless”, “I did not know that I was black. I didn’t even know that I was female.” Notwithstanding these, the collection is full of interesting and well-explored analyses of the politics of blackness in Zimbabwe and further afield.