Book – This Mournable Body (pp 125 – 225, Part II Suspended) Author – Tsitsi Dangarembga
“You are an ill-made person. You are being unmade. The hyena laugh-howls at your destruction. It screams like a demented spirit and the floor dissolves beneath you” (p 127).
Tambu has a mental breakdown at the end of the last chapter and attacks her student. Now she wakes up in a mental ward.
During the breakdown she references the hyena within her.
“‘Aha,’ says the doctor who knows nothing, ‘Guilt. Following an event seen as sacrifice. You feel guilty about the death of your brother” (p 33).
White psychiatrist at hospital suggests she has survivors guilt about her family.
Tambu reveals Nyasha struggled with an eating disorder and attempted suicide (p 34).
“You cannot tell her that things keep repeating, that this time too it was as with your mother, and that you were not recognized because it was necessary to prefer another, your white classmate” (p 34).
Tambu struggles with feeling looked over, ignored. Both in her family, her workplace, her country, etc. In terms of work (and the world in general) she feels white people are chosen over her. Within in her family she is looked over based on familial hierarchy (she is the second daughter in her family… I think).
“Nobody sees me” (p 135).
“The world crawls slowly into your throat, for the hurts of adulthood have not assailed you as violently as those of childhood” (p 135).
Important/Interesting Hospital Characters:
Cecilia Flowers: tries to breastfeed people, possibly lost a child in a tragic way.
Ed Porter: old, racist white man with dementia maybe? Beats Student Nurse w/ cane.
Widow Riley: (from start of book) thinks Tambu looks like her daughter Edie
“A cruel smile hovers above your lips at the widow’s fall in the world that has made you and her and all the other white people in the establishment equal” (p 142).
Tambu continues to confront her ideas/feelings about social hierarchies and constructs.
Equalizing feeling of being in treatment.
Aunt Lucia, Kiri, and Nyasha visit Tambu in the hospital (p 45).
“My aunt Manyanga told me she has been praying for you from the very first day…She’s also praying for that girl you nearly murdered” (p 151).
First mention of student Tambu attacked since she was hospitalized.
Tambu does not want to admit or accept that this happened.
It is decided that Tambu will live with Nyasha upon release (p 152). As Tambu leaves with Nyasha she is at first hopeful that her cousin, who she sees as smarter and higher-up in the world due to her European education, will help her climb up in the world. As they near Nyasha’s house she is slowly disillusioned and becomes judgmental.
“…nor do you comprehend how this is possible: to have a degree in England and Europe and still wrestle adverse prospects…Your mood plummets as you realize you will gain little from living with your cousin, who has turned out not much better than yourself in spite of all her childhood advantages” (p 153).
Tambu often reduces people (including herself) to their current economic condition or social standing. Clothing, career, education are highly valued by Tambu. It seems she views people in terms of what they can offer her.
Nyasha’s Family:
Nyasha: Trying to start a writing or storytelling workshop with Zimbabwean girls/women.
Leon: German husband trying to get his PhD, some kind of art subject? Studying stone sculptures in Zimbabwe. Speaks Shona (Tambu and Nyasha’s language) better than he speaks English, but observes Zimbabweans speak to him in English (because he is white, and Rhodesians were from England).
Anesu: older child, daughter. Very smart and observant.
Panashe: younger brother.
Mai Taka: house help.
“‘When we are here, children, we say welcome outside, then we say hello inside the house. We clap the way I showed you. You have to ask how everyone is.’ ‘Nyama chirombowe, Maiguru.’ Leon, who has not yet gone out, begins the ritual…The children copy their father. ‘You say nyama shewe, because you are a girl,’ Nyasha instructs Anesu… ‘Why?’ Anesu asks…’Why do girls have to say that? Why do girls have to clap different?’…Nyasha considers this for a while before she replies, ‘You know what, there isn’t any sensible answer to that. So the best thing is, you make up your own mind'” (p 159-160).
Nyasha is a feminist and struggles with the treatment of women in her own country. In this instance she is confronted with a simple question from her daughter, Why do girls have to do it differently?
It can be difficult to make peace with customs that separate men and women. If equality is the goal, do you keep those aspects of any given culture or do you eradicate the custom?
p 160 – 161 Nyasha and Leon describe Nyasha’s father receiving her “lobola” (bride price, dowry); he asked for a low dowry (“a symbolic one hundred deutschmarks” (p 161).
“You swallow a wince at the mention of this lowly sum, while Nyasha says bitterly, “Yes so you can imagine what they think of me. And then of course they laugh at Leon, too, saying he’s murungu asina mari. To them, if you’re white there’s something wrong with your if you’re not wealthy” (p 161).
Leon: “Yes…People here think too much about money. But what does it mean to be without money? Nyasha and I are happy” (p 161).
Interesting culture clashes here. Leon is German and therefore comes form a country that is wealthy, successful, and has many social programs in place protecting people from abject poverty. In some ways, his ability to not worry about money is due to where he was born. In Germany, few people die from lack of money. But that’s not true everywhere.
p 164 Tambu reflects on her dissapointment in Nyasha, and is confused why Nyasha herself is not ashamed. “You want one or the other, a powerful radiance or obvious failure, not this liminal complexity.”
“…your cousin has given in to chaos, is wildly wasting her entire upbringing and her immeasurable advantages” (p 165).
p 166 Leon hums “a seventies Nigerian Afrobeat hit about women who try to turn themselves into ladies by invariably seizing the biggest piece of meat at every opportunity.” This song comes up several times throughout Part II.
“She says she wants to build a place where women can study women’s issues with modern technology. I ask her who she thinks is interested in women’s issues. And I try to tell her nobody here is interested in any of these things that she thinks are important, not even the women. I explain to her, least of all the women” (p 167).
Tambu agrees with Leon on this topic.
While Leon seemed supportive of Nyasha’s workshop at first, and presents himself as an enlightened, feminist, European man, as Part II goes on he continues to be harsher and harsher towards Nyasha about how useless her work is. He is a great foil for the type of sexism shown by the Zimbabwean men in the book so far. Different countries and cultures struggle with different types or sexism.
“…Leon starts fretting about the biggest-piece-of-meat syndrome Fela Kuti sings about spreading to his daughter. ‘We should have stayed in Germany. We should teach the children all guests are equal…I do not like this ‘special’ affair. In Germany we do not have this kind of thing. You have it here from the British. From them because they have a class system which is terrible. And their administration system is worse than ours in Germany” (p 174).
Leon goes on to rant about how people are Zimbabwe are just human capital because of their lack of perspective. He takes a distanced approach when talking about it, explaining that to the world and people who want to profit, Zimbabweans are reduced to dollar signs, productivity, and votes (by their and other governments). He speaks about it like he is analyzing it in a paper, and not like he is speaking to two Zimbabwean women and two half-Zimbabwean children.
pp 176-177 Nyasha suggests that Tambu apologizes to the girl she attacked and her family. Tambu does not like this idea. “…you hear the hyena cackle.”
“A new idea unfurls within you. For the first time since meeting Nyasha decades ago, you begin to suspect that your cousin does not like you” (p 179).
“‘There can’t be a country that hates women as much as [Zimbabwe].’ ‘Yemen,’ nods Leon. ‘Pakistan. Saudi Arabia” (p 181)
Hierarchy of sexism. Individuals have their own ways of deciding which countries are worse or better than others in certain aspects.
Leon discusses going back to Germany. “You want to be away from your children. This makes it all convenient…You will let me go, so you do not have them. Pretending that you are doing something here with this nothing, these workshops and these egotistical young women” (p 184).
“Leon jumps up to help because he always helps his wife with the housework” (p 185). Contrasting the argument he is having where he is coming off as insensitive to his wife. He is splitting housework, going through the motions of treating his wife like an equal without doing so.
“Men…They don’t want the biggest piece, right? They just want a piece of meat, that’s all” (p 188).
“You begin to suspect that Cousin-Brother-in-Law and Nyasha are not being honest, that they found each other because neither possesses the hardiness success requires, so they have dressed discouragement up in the glamour of intellect” (p 188).
Nyasha discusses an assignment she gave her workshop participants. She asked them to write about a great African woman and many of them wrote about themselves.
“You grow increasingly galled by your cousin and her assumption that everyone has the luxury she has of surviving without being obsessed with one’s own person” (p 189).
“They do not know what it is to struggle with the prospect that the hyena is you, nor how this combat marshals in the task of finishing the brutish animal off, while ensuring you remain alive yourself” (p 189).
P 191 I’ve noticed that Tambu switches back and forth between observing people doing worse than her and worrying that that means she will be doing that bad someday, to seeing someone doing poorly and feeling better about herself, to seeing others doing well and feeling worse about herself, to sometimes seeing positive examples and feeling like that means she will certainly do well herself someday.
All of these are examples of comparing oneself to others. Some ways are more positive than others, but all ways assume that something happening to someone means something for you, but that’s not how the world works. Which is why comparing oneself to others is not very helpful for personal growth.
Mainini Lucia’s son was brutally murdered by Rhodesian soldiers (p 191).
p 197 Nyasha and Leon argue about Nyasha focusing too much on her workshop and not on her children.
Silence, the house guard and Mai Taka’s husband. I believe Nyasha and Leon’s argument occured right before the scenes with Silence to again contrast the different types of relational issues and sexism faced by Nyasha vs. Mai Taka.
p 198-204 Mai Taka wishes to go to the movies with Nyasha and her family on her afternoon off. She wears a dress in the car. Silence is enraged that his wife would be with another family, out of uniform, on her day off.
Nyasha at first encourages Mai Taka to stand up to him and stay in the car. She does. But after seeing how threatening Silence was, Nyasha says “Please be careful how you deal with your husband when you get back” (p 203).
Mai Taka has already been beaten by Silence before.
“Leon picks his son up, which makes your nephew pump his lungs full and howl at the top of his voice. People turn to see what the tall white man is doing to the little brown person” (p 206).
Interracial couples and mixed race families are sadly judged in many different places. I wonder how mixed race families are treated in general in Zimbabwe and Germany.
p 207 Tambu runs in to Tracey Stevenson (the woman she thought she was at the club with Kiri and tried to attack). Tracey is another person Tambu feels was chosen and looked at over her. Tracey also left the ad agency.
p 212 Mai Taka avoids a beating from her husband because he took their son to his mothers house and went off with his “14 years old lover.” In Zimbabwe children belong to the paternal line.
p 215-218 Panashe admits his teacher hits the children. Nyasha and Leon struggle with this information and get upset. Tambu believes they are all too emotional and wonders how you’re meant to discipline and teach children without hitting them.
“Women in Zimbabwe are undaunted by such things…If one thing doesn’t turn out, a Zimbabwean woman simply turns to another…prove that you are a true Zimbabwean woman…Nyasha doesn’t belong. Like her husband, she is a kindly import. For the first time in your life you feel significantly superior” (p 215).
Leon states that he believes corporal punishment should be outlawed, as he is from Germany and understands where these kind of things lead (referencing Nazis).
“‘Tambudzai, what kind of society do you have here…What kind of country do you build when children are raised in fear?’ ‘People aren’t afraid,’ you say. ‘What we are is disciplined. We know how to behave properly most of the time. We know how to teach people to do it'” (p 216).
Interesting contradiction in Tambu. She hates that she is not from a nation that is doing better, yet feels protective over it and it’s customs. I don’t think it’s uncommon to have mixed feelings about where you come form.
Again, I wonder, as a country advances, at what point do you let go of old, hurtful customs (such as beating women and children)? How much do you attach these customs to your peoples success?
“You pour your coffee, finding that this little family is too emotional about everything, takes Western values about many matters too seriously, and this is–well, somewhat primitive” (p 217).
It is revealed that it is December of 1999 (p 219).
Mai Taka has miscarried and had a stillbirth. Nyasha and Leon rush to help her as Tambu prepares to live with Tracey Stevenson and start her new job with her.
