I attended my first literary festival in Cologne (Lit.Cologne) and I was in conversations with author and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga is one of the most important voices on the African continent. For her artistic endeavours and her work on civil liberties and women’s rights in Zimbabwe, she received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 2021. Her new essay collection, Black and Female, is a paradigm-shifting and highly political exploration of the double suppression of Black women.
Her novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), was the first book published by a Black woman from Zimbabwe in English. During our conversation, we spoke about her prose, her ability to take her readers into her world with chilling detail, and her feminism. Danarembga spoke about her literary inspirations and what it means to write literature while living on the African continent. In the meantime, you can find an excerpt from her book, Black and Female, in Granta Magazine.