De-silencing the Past: Traumatic War Memories in Zimbabwean Narratives

Abstract

The contradictions and traumas of the national liberation war in Zimbabwe (1966-1979) as well as the horrors and violence that marked that troubled period are conveyed from different perspectives by the Zimbabwean writer Alexander Kanengoni in Echoing Silences (1997) and by the British writer Alexandra Fuller in Scribbling the Cat. Travels with an African Soldier (2004). In the post-independence period, Zimbabwean narratives disclose the pain and suffering associated with the liberation struggle and the birth of the new nation; the search for identity in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, a country deeply fractured by colonial rule, combines personal experience and historical memory. Although a sense of failure and loss pervades both narratives, the painful process of de-silencing the past generates a cathartic effect, paving the path for healing and reconciliation . DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-31 Bibliography Chan, Stephen. 2005. The Memory of Violence: Trauma in the Writings of Alexander Kanengoni and Yvonne Vera and the Idea of Unreconciled Citizenship in Zimbabwe. Third World Quarterly , 26, 2: 369-382. Chiwome, Emmanuel & Zifikile Mguni. 2000. Individual Identity, Ethnicity and Nation- Building: An Exploration of Historical Characters in two Zimbabwean War and Independence Novels. Journal of Cultural Studies , 2, 1: 160-179. Dodgson-Katiyo, Pauline. 2009. In the Enemy’s Camp. Women Representing Male Violence in Zimbabwe’s Wars. Stella Borg Barthet ed. Shared Waters. Soundings in Postcolonial Literatures . Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 60-74. Emenyonu, Ernest N. ed. 2008. War in African Literature Today 26 . Woodbridge-Ibadan: James Currey-Nebn. Fuller, Alexandra. 2003 [2001]. Don ’ t Let ’ s Go to the Dogs Tonight. An African Childhood . New York-Toronto: Random House. Fuller, Alexandra. 2004. Scribbling the Cat. Travels with an African Soldier . New York: The Penguin Press. Harold-Barry, David ed. 2005. Zimbabwe. The Past is the Future: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis . Harare: Weaver Press. Harris, Ashleigh. 2005. Writing Home: Inscriptions of Whiteness/Descriptions of Belonging in White Zimbabwean Memoir-Autobiography. Robert Muponde & Ranka Primorac eds. Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture . Harare: Weaver Press, 103-118. Kaarsholm, Preben. 2005. Coming to Terms with Violence: Literature and the Developmment of a Public Sphere in Zimbabwe. Robert Muponde & Ranka Primorac eds. 2005. Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture . Harare: Weaver Press, 3-24. Kanengoni, Alexander. 1997. Echoing Silences . Harare: Baobab Books. LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma . Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001. Lewis, Simon. 2003. White Women Writers and Their African Invention . Gainesville: University Press of Florida. McDermott Hughes, David. 2009. Whiteness in Zimbabwe. Race, Landscape, and the Problem of Belonging . New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Muponde, Robert & Ranka Primorac eds. 2005. Versions of Zimbabwe: New Approaches to Literature and Culture . Harare: Weaver Press. Norridge, Zoe. 2008. The Need to Go Further? Dedication & Distance in the War Narratives of Alexandra Fuller & Alexander Kanengoni. Ernest N. Emenyonu ed. War in African Literature Today 26 . Woodbridge-Ibadan: James Currey-Nebn, 103-111. Primorac, Ranka. 2006. The Place of Tears. The Novel and Politics in Modern Zimbabwe . London-New York: Tauris. Primorac, Ranka & Stephen Chan eds. 2007. Zimbabwe in Crisis. The International Response and the Space of Silence . London-New York: Routledge. Rauwerda, Antje M. 2009. Exile Encampments: Whiteness in Alexandra Fuller’s Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier . Journal of Commonwealth Literature , 44, 2: 51-64. Schwab, Gabriele. 2010. Haunting Legacies. Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma . New York: Columbia University Press. Simoes da Silva, Tony. 2005. Narrating a White Africa: Autobiography, Race and History. Third World Quarterly , 26, 2: 471-478. Soyinka, Wole. 1999. The Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness . New York: Oxford University Press. Tal, Kali. 1996. Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vambe, Maurice T. 2004. African Oral Story-telling and the Zimbabwean Novel in English . Pretoria: University of South Africa Press. Whitlock, Gillian. 2000. The Intimate Empire. Reading Women ’ s Autobiography . London-New York: Cassell. Zhuwarara, Rino. 2001. An Introduction to Zimbabwean Literature in English . Harare: College Press.