Tsitsi Quotes & Sayings

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. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

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. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

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. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

We co-existed in peaceful detachment — Tsitsi Dangarembga

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!" — Tsitsi Dangarembga

Condemning Nyasha to whoredom, making her a victim of her 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 had thought it depended on. Men took it everywhere with them. Even heroes like Babamukuru did it. And that was the problem. You had to admit Nyasha had no tact. You had to admit she was altogether too volatile and strong-willed. You couldn't ignore the fact that she had no respect for Babamukuru when she ought to have had lots of it. But what I didn't like was the way that all conflicts came back to the question of femaleness. Femaleness as opposed and inferior to maleness. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

You know, Tsitsi, you are so quick to point out that you are not a prostitute. I just want to laugh because you are just falling into rank. You all should spare us your 'morality' that lauds 'women' over the supposedly lesser 'whores' and 'girls'. That's how society sees us. That's how you see us. You want it to be that we are like coal, only to be loved in the dark and tossed like ashes come morning. — Panashe Chigumadzi

I was not sorry when my brother died — Tsitsi Dangarembga

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. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

This business of womanhood is a heavy burden. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

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. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

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. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

She thinks she is white,' they used to sneer, and that was as bad as a curse. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

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

Tsitsi and the rest of the nation who now found themselves degreed and broke, her parents and the parents of the nation with degreed children and still broke, had thought-convinced themselves-that the poverty of their lives could be eliminated by 'professionalisation'. — Panashe Chigumadzi

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. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

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. — Tsitsi Dangarembga