Tsitsi Dangarembga Quotes

I knew, for instance, that rooms where people slept exuded peculiarly human smells just as the goat pen smelt goaty and the cattle kraal bovine. It was common knowledge among the younger girls at school that the older girls menstruated into sundry old rags which they washed and reused and washed again. I knew, too, that the fact of menstruation was a shamefully unclean secret that should not be allowed to contaminate immaculate male ears by indiscreet reference to this type of first in their presence.

Words like 'always' and 'never' were meaningful to my father, who thought in absolutes and whose mind consequently made great leaps in antagonistic directions when it leapt at all.

What I wanted was to get away. But the moon was too far beyond, and there were white bits under me, where the flesh was shredded off and the bone gleamed that famed ivory, and those below cowered and, if they were not quick enough, were spattered in blood. Then came the jolt, as of a fall, and I saw the leg was caught in an ungainly way in the smaller branches of a mutamba tree, the foot hooked, long like that infamous fruit.

The victimisation, I saw, was universal. It didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition. It didn't depend on any of the things I had thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them.

You can't go on all the time being whatever's necessary. Youve got to have some conviction, and I'm convinced I don't want to be anyone's underdog.

Can you cook books and feed them to your husband? Stay at home with your mother. Learn to cook and clean. Grow vegetables.

You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your perception ... you see what is, where most people see what they expect.

...and thinking how dreadfully familiar that scene had been, with Babamukuru condemning Nyasha to whoredom, making her a victim of here femaleness, just as I had felt victimised at home in the days when Nhamo went to school and I grew my maize. The victimisation, I saw was universal. It didn't depend on poverty, on lack of education or on tradition. It didn't depend on any of the things I thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them. Even heroes like Babamukuru did it. And that was the problem.

It's bad enough ... when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well! That's the end, really, that's the end.

Everything about her spoke of alternatives and possibilities that if considered too deeply would wreak havoc with the neat plan I had laid out for my life.

Now why [...] should I worry about what people say when my own father call me a whore?

We co-existed in peaceful detachment

if someone smiles at you it does not mean they're happy. It just means "I think that if I smile I might get out of this alive!" [http://brickmag.com/interview-tsitsi-...]

Nyasha knew nothing about leaving. She had only been taken to places - to the mission, to England, back to the mission. She did not know what essential parts of you stayed behind no matter how violently you tried to dislodge them in order to take them with you.