Spiritual heritage in ‘Book of Not’

Ranga Mataire The Reader
VERY few readers are able to decipher the spiritual and cultural heritage inherent in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s “Book of Not” (2006) and “Shards” by Cynthia Marangwanda (2014) with such clarity as Josephine Muganiwa, a literary enthusiast who has taught literature for more than a decade.

In her presentation at a recent symposium on Intangible Heritage at the University of Zimbabwe, Muganiwa stated that the title “Book of Not” is derived from W.E.B Dubois’ essay of the same title that deals with the problem of being African-American, and therefore having a dual heritage of Western model and the African heritage.

Having experienced British colonialism, Muganiwa argues that Zimbabwe has a similar experience as that expressed by Dubois in his essay. The result of this experience has been conflicting cultural paradigms in a world that has chosen to follow the modernist approach to development.

In analysing “The Book of Not” and “Shards” are texts narrating the Zimbabwean story after conquest. The main characters are raised in a modern culture which results in their fractured world view, and this is largely because it negates their natural heritage.

Muganiwa told participants that Tambu, in “The Book of Not” (2006) which is a sequel to “Nervous Conditions” (1988) is one of the few privileged girls to be admitted at the Sacred Heart, a school meant for young white girls.

“Tambu is part of the window-dressing to enable the school to be termed multi-racial. She resolves that in order to fit in she must please the white people and be at peace with them,” Muganiwa said.

She alluded to the double consciousness that Tambu suffers by erroneously applying the African philosophy of unhu: “I am because we are” to refer to her passive acceptance of the white people at the school.

Quoting “The Black Souls of Black Folk” in “Three Negro Classics” (1905), Muganiwa examines the double consciousness, the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others; measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

“One ever feels his two-ness — an American, a Negro: two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

While Tambu is aware that she is black and belongs to the Sigauke family with a strong rural background, she considers herself civilised because of having mission experience.

Tambu’s major problem is that she is never groomed into her culture as she relates to unhu from her casual interaction with her grandmother, derails from the essence of that unhu soon after the death of her grandmother as no one is there to mentor her.

Her mother is busy fighting Maiguru and Babamukuru from taking her children away, and Maiguru is busy pandering to Babamukuru’s whims as well as taking care of Nyasha. She is often left at the mercy of nuns at the Sacred Heart and it comes as no surprise that she is dislocated and fails to fit into both black and white communities.

The conversation that Tambu has with her mother is quite revealing. It reveals Tambu’s lack of sensibility as her association with whites has made her individualistic to the extent that she does not feel obligated to fend for her mother and other siblings.

Similarly, “Shards” is also set in modern Harare in the post 2000 era. The main character is nameless, but represents middle class.

She is a poet, widely read and also enjoys painting graffiti as an art form. She is a university student without interest in studying. Her parents are affluent and own a number of cars; their house is a double storey, and has a spacious kitchen downstairs and a swimming pool, albeit dry due to lack of municipal water.

She uses the substantial allowance she gets from her mother for alcohol and cigarettes. The setting of the story raises the question of the authentic African. The family has embraced modernity and is authentically global.

The narrator surfs internet in her home, in search of stimulus, but is overwhelmed with e-mails just like the Russian youths before the Bolshevik revolution in Tugenev’s “Fathers and Sons”.