Nervous Conditions

"Yes. Nervous Conditions . This was hailed as big contribution to African feminism at the time, in 1988 when it was published. And it was anti-colonial, dealing with racial distinctions and culture clashes and it challenges all sorts of stereotypes about the west being more sophisticated than Africa and about African womanhood. Even the title is an attack on colonialism because it’s talking about anorexia – you’ve come over here to kill us with your western diseases kind of thing. It’s about a Shona girl whose brother dies and this death means that she is allowed to be educated. It’s about the patriarchal culture and how, once she’s educated, she is expected to provide for the whole family like a man would have had to. It’s actually the story of five different women. Totally different. What’s amazing though is that the accent has changed now. Since 1980 when schools became multi-racial everyone, black and white, has the same accent. That didn’t used to be true. Actually, no. My school was private and my best friend , still my best friend today now that we both live in London, was black and had to knit balaclavas for the Rhodesian army. I remember that mine was green, to blend in with the countryside, and hers was brown to blend in with her skin. I wrote a play once, I remember, and she was in it, singing songs about the terrorists. Bizarre. But I worked for the state broadcaster for so long, broadcasting to blacks and whites, that I suppose I had an identity with both so I’m lucky. And now it’s more about class than colour."