Zimbabwean literature
The tradition of literature starts with a long oral tradition, was influenced heavily by western literature that influenced multiple countries in the same region such as Malawi and Zambia whereby these three countries have very similar languages and a lot of words seem to be quite similar only that the tones or infliction or pronunciation is different because during colonial rule most slaves would run away, and acts as a form of protest to the government.
[1][2][3] Prominent Zimbabwean writers include Doris Lessing, Dambudzo Marechera,[4] NoViolet Bulawayo,[1] Chenjerai Hove, Yvonne Vera, Stanlake Samkange.
"[8] In the novel she imagines Cecil Rhodes as "enslaved and enfolded" by the landscape, an "enchantress who bound men's souls for ever", and wonders whether Rhodesia had been "wife and child" to him, in his solitude.
"[8] In The Claw, she wrote of the country's empty landscapes that allowed for both personal freedom and expansion of the soul: "The world seemed filled with gracious dimness and made up of illimitable space.
People all over the country must have glanced at the paragraph with its sensational heading and felt a little spurt of anger mingled with what was almost satisfaction, as if some belief had been confirmed, as if something had happened which could only have been expected.
Philippa Berlyn, a co-founder, held the belief that an independent Rhodesia would need to accommodate both black and white citizens and her quarterly could be an outlet where poets from different races could listen to one another.
[12] Occasionally guest editors published poetry by black writers that was in opposition to the view of the Two Tone founders of a shared national loyalty between the two races.
Colin Style was awarded the Ingrid Jonker Prize for best published collection in English in Southern Africa, 1977 with Baobab Street (1977).
In a 1978 academic essay on Rhodesian poetry, Graham Robin wrote that “Brettell puts into words the halting stupefaction of the exile in such a new and strange land.
Dambudzo Marechera contrasts the time when 'I was yours/and you were mine' with the disenfranchised present:[17] Now a man in exile from the warmth of your arms and the milk of your teeth the breath of your secret whispers in my ears shall 1 not stride back to you with haste rout all my enemies and bind the wicked husbandmen Shall I not kneel to kiss the grains of your sand to rise naked before you — a bowl of incense?
and the smoke of my nakedness shall be an offering to you pledging my soul Tsitsi Dangarembga wrote Nervous Conditions (1988), notable at the time as the first published novel that had been written in English by a black Zimbabwean woman.
[19] The story is set in then Rhodesia, following a young black girl, Tambudzai in her quest to get an education amid the backdrop of racism and gender inequality.
