Women’s History Month Profile: Tsitsi Dangarembga

Tsitsi Dangarembga is an internationally acclaimed Zimbabwean author and film maker, who is well known and loved for breaking new grounds and inspiring African women to break the patriarchal limitations. Tsitsi has written quite a number of interesting plays and has published an award winning novel, Nervous Conditions which won the African section of the Commonwealth Writers Prize long before women were recognised as competitive writers.

Dangarembga burst into the international scene when her novel got international recognition as the first English novel ever written by a black Zimbabwean woman. However, she did not stop there after her film studies, Tsitsi went on to changed “her-story” again when she wrote and created the story for the highest grossing film in Zimbabwean history film Neria. 1996 she did not disappoint as she lived up to her standards of being the first of almost everything when she directed the film Everyone’s Child,  becoming the first ever feature film to directed by a black Zimbabwean woman and it was shown worldwide including the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.

Quotes we love by Tsitsi Dangarembga

“This business of womanhood is a heavy burden.” Nervous Conditions― Tsitsi Dangarembga

“There have been two major reasons for my not having worked on prose since Nervous Conditions: firstly, the novel was published only after I had turned to film as a medium; secondly, Virginia Woolf’s shrewd observation that a woman needs £500 and a room of her own in order to write is entirely valid. Incidentally, I am moving and hope that, for the first time since Nervous Conditions, I shall have a room of my own. I’ll try to ignore the bit about £500.” ― Tsitsi Dangarembga