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The Troubled Masculinities in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions

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African Masculinities

Abstract

Much of the criticism on Tsitsi Dangarembga’s 1988 novel, Nervous Conditions, has focused on its dense network of female characters and feminist concerns. In her 1992 study, Flora Veit-Wild links the women of Nervous Conditions by arguing that they constitute a female spectrum offering “points of reference” for the central character as she moves beyond her family’s homestead into a larger world, and begins to shape her own identity. At one end of the spectrum is Tambu’s defeatist, nearly destitute mother, Mainini. Next is Tambu’s educated yet often submissive aunt, Maiguru, followed by an uneducated yet unorthodox and ambitious aunt, Lucia. At the far end of the line is Tambu’s brilliant and rebellious cousin, Nyasha.1

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Notes

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© 2005 Lahoucine Ouzgane and Robert Morrell

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Holland, K. (2005). The Troubled Masculinities in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions . In: Ouzgane, L., Morrell, R. (eds) African Masculinities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979605_8

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