Date of Award
8-16-2024
Document Type
Open Access Thesis
Department
English Language and Literatures
First Advisor
Eli Jelly-Schapiro
Abstract
Tsitsi Dangarembga’s second novel in her Nervous Conditions trilogy, The Book of Not (2006) emphasizes the disabling nature of colonial domination and terror through pain and violence inflicted on the body and the mind. Through the use of Frantz Fanon’s colonial and post-colonial theory and Homi Bhabha’s concept of colonial mimicry the critical nature of Tambudzai—the main protagonist—position in the novel becomes apparent. Just as the title suggests, the novel becomes a book of negation and unbecoming as Tambudzai tries to find her place as a woman in Southern Rhodesia while attending a European colonial institution while war rages just beyond the boundaries of the manicure lawns of the convent school. While she struggles with the internalized racism and constant rejection, she is also in a perpetual state of fight of flight as she tries to keep herself alienated from her community. Tambudzai does not rebel like Nyasha in the first novel, nor is she docile like Lucia—Tambudzai chooses the path of least resistance with detrimental consequences pertaining to her loss of identity, subjectivity, and personhood. Her sense of wellbeing, or unhu, is torn apart and she ultimately becomes pieces of a whole like her sister Netsai.
Rights
© 2024, Lily Kay Lynn Cook
Recommended Citation
Cook, L. K.(2024). Mental Trauma, Colonial Mimicry, and Internalized Racism in Tsitsi Dangarembga's the Book of Not. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/7874