A dollop of sadza and a bag of mealie meal: food in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Tambudzai trilogy

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the various ways in which food is introduced into three novels by the Zimbabwean writer, Tsitsi Dangarembga (Nervous Conditions, The Book of Not and This Mournable Body). A taxonomy of the different ways in which food and meals are used in fiction is presented, and then applied to these novels. Food is employed as a means of setting a scene for the heroine, Tambudzai: living in the rural impoverished homestead of her childhood; in the mission with her headmaster uncle, Babamukuru, and his family; in the Young Ladies’ College of the Sacred Heart and finally in the offices where Tambudzai works in later life. Food is also used to illustrate the relationships between various characters, to develop the characters, and to represent the relationships and deracination created by the disjunctions between a colonial education and the traditional African cultures of Zimbabwe. Tambudzai’s cousin, Nyasha, suffers from bulimia. The article considers some possible readings of the disorder in this context. For example, is Dangarembga’s character a “native” in “a nervous condition” as a result of colonialism, a condition suggested by Frantz Fanon, or does it reflect the oppressive patriarchy represented here by her father, Babamukuru?