Nervous Conditions (Nervous Conditions #1)

by Tsitsi Dangarembga

She was not beautiful now, but I loved her, so I was ashamed that she saw me search for the lost beauty.

Exclusion whispered that my existence was not necessary, making me no more than an unfortunate by-product of some inexorable natural process.

I was sad for them rather than anguished over any loss of mine, because my brother had become a stranger to me.

I was always aware of my surroundings. When the surroundings were new and unfamiliar, the awareness was painful and made me behave very strangely.

But what I didn’t like was the way all the conflicts came back to this question of femaleness. Femaleness as opposed and inferior to maleness.

I was beginning to suspect that I was not the person I was expected to be, and took it as evidence that somewhere I had taken a wrong turning.

‘It’s bad enough,’ she said severely, ‘when a country gets colonised, but when the people do as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end.’

And still I could not accept responsibility for my weakness, hoping instead to disguise it by suffering. I let guilt, so many razor-sharp edges of it, slice away at me.

She thought there was a difference between people deserting their daughters and people saving themselves.