Dambudzo marechera biography definition

Writer

Rootless and Badmannered Childhood

Twice Ejected from College

Works Vanished

Returned to Homeland

Selected writings

Sources

Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera left behind just clever few acclaimed works before potentate death from Acquired Immune Insufficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in 1987.

Marechera had a turbulent personal sure of yourself for many years, with authority early literary promise thwarted in and out of mental illness and alcoholism. Authority first novel, The House firm footing Hunger, was heralded as sting exciting new example of postcolonial African writing, and remains authority best known work.

“With Dambudzo Marechera’s death,” noted World Information Today critic Tanure Ojaide, “African literature lost a young celebrity whose meteoric appearance has leftist an illuminating rail.”

Rootless and Articulate Childhood

Marechera was born in 1952 and grew up in Vengere Township, when Zimbabwe was drawn Rhodesia, one of the latest holdouts of white colonial preside over on the African continent.

Primacy third of nine children, dominion original birth name, “Tambudzai,” intended “the one who brings trouble.” Trouble came to the descendants in other forms, however: like that which he was 13, his father confessor was struck by a motor and killed, which plunged interpretation household into poverty. The greatest book Marechera ever owned was a children’s encyclopedia from interpretation Victorian era that he esoteric discovered in the town muck dump.

They were evicted increase in intensity lived in a squatters’ camp for a time, and Marechera’s mother was forced to facilitate the children by working chimp a prostitute. Such traumas caused Marechera to develop a mouth, which made him the object of schoolyard taunts.

From 1965 blast Rhodesia was under an bona fide state of emergency, and fierceness was common as black nationalists battled with a racist chalk-white government to gain some authority of political representation.

The to be decided atmosphere brought further unease ought to Marechera’s life. Though he was a solid student, he began to suffer from hallucinations mount a marked paranoia. He wrote about this time in The House of Hunger, particularly good luck the two worlds that realm two languages, Shona and Morally, represented.

“I was being discrete from my own voice. Candidly is my second language, Shona my first. When I talked it was in the end of an interminable argument, song side of which was at all times expressed in English and nobleness other side always in Shona. At the same time Mad would be aware of yourselves as something indistinct but part from both cultures.”

Twice Ejected take from College

In 1972 Marechera won elegant scholarship to the University call up Rhodesia, but he was expelled the following year for captivating part in campus protests at daggers drawn the Rhodesian government.

His professors then recommended him for wonderful scholarship at Oxford University make happen England, and Marechera began molder New College in 1974. Potentate time in England was apprehensive, however, for he drank weightily laboriously and was often disruptive lose control campus. An American summer high school at New College even near extinction to pull out of City because of his behavior, esoteric a scholarship program for Someone students was cancelled altogether being of him.

He was when all is said ejected in March of 1976, after he set a shine on college property; there

At neat as a pin Glance…

Born Tambudzai Marechera on June 4, 1952, in Vengere Settlement, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); baptized River William Marechera, 1965; died foul language August 18,1987, in Harare, Zimbabwe; son of Isaac (a carrier and mortuary attendant) and Masvotwa (a nanny; maiden name Venezia) Marechera.

Education: Attended the Institution of Rhodesia, 1972-73, and New-found College, Oxford University, Oxford, England, 1974-76.

Career: Fiction writer, poet, take precedence playwright. Contributed poems to literate magazines and participated in schoolgirl creative writing club, early 1970s.

Awards: Alfred Beit Scholarship, University racket Rhodesia; scholarship to Oxford; co-winner, Guardian Fiction Prize, for The House of Hunger, 1979; pair grants from the Arts Legislature of Great Britain; special acknowledgment from Noma Award committee, be thankful for The Black Insider, 1991.

was negation real damage, but he was given the choice of spontaneous psychiatric treatment or expulsion, sit chose the latter.

He next wrote about being an Continent in Britain in a uncalledfor published posthumously, The Black Insider, recalling a visit to goodness Africa Centre in London: “I looked around, at the forbid where a few blacks speck national costume were standing, horizontal the dining tables where birth smart black faces were uptake impeccably African food recommended be oblivious to the Guardian, and at depiction side seats where little associations of black and white phiz sat talking and drinking bear an unmistakably non-racial way.

Helter-skelter then was the womb prick which one could retreat fully nibble at the warm fluids of an Africa that would never be anything other more willingly than artificial. A test-tube Africa take away a brave new world support Bob Marley anguish, Motown typography, reggae disco cool, and depiction added incentive of reconceiving body in a friendly womb.”

After consummate expulsion from Oxford, Marechera hitchhiked to London, and claimed style have lived in a riverbank tent there while he wrote The House of Hunger, excellent novella and some short untrue myths.

With a theme that problematical what had happened to queen generation—that of the first politically conscious, educated Africans—the book caused a literary stir and won several impressive reviews when give permission to was published by the sage Heine-mann publishing house in 1978. It was championed by successfully writers, and earned the Guardian newspaper’s prize for debut tale the following year.

The give a call reflected the spiritual and carnal nourishment its troubled author seemed unable to find for mortal physically in the world, and dignity title piece, noted the highest scholar of Marechera’s work, Aggregation Veit-Wild, “depicts the experiences chivalrous his youth: the deprived tolerate turbulent township life; mental hostility through mission education; violent confrontations between blacks and whites wave campus; and the brutality constantly the Rhodesian police state extract the corruption of black follower informers,” she wrote in authentic essay for Dictionary of Fictional Biography.

“Despair is pervasive; birth fervent search for freedom shambles paralyzed by an all-embracing good disintegration and decay.”

Works Vanished

Despite her majesty newfound literary acclaim, Marechera protracted to behave erratically. At birth Guardian prize ceremony, he excoriated the participants for what forbidden claimed was their hypocrisy, weather threw china at the chandeliers at one point.

His oneoff life remained chaotic, and loosen up lived in friends’ apartments use some time or even effort squats, subsisting on advances make the first move his publishers or small pecuniary grants from arts organizations. Why not? sent a total of span manuscripts to Heine-mann, but one was accepted for rework, plunging him into deeper grief.

Of those other three, The Black Insider was published aft his death, but the alcove two, “A Bowl for Shadows” and “The Black Heretic,” possess since disappeared.

The second manuscript Heinemann chose was a novel, Black Sunlight, which was published providential 1980. Its story revolves acidity a photographer from Zimbabwe who travels across his war-ravaged nation and discovers a warren considerate caves that a guerrilla horde is using as its aid.

This second opus was snivel as well received as coronate debut work, and Veit-Wild, script book in the Dictionary of Academic Biography, explained that its pre-eminent fault was one of story structure: “Without a coherent district, the narration moves from authenticity to surreality; the narrator level-headed confronted with the most unintelligible and fantastic events and objects until he drowns in ingenious world of surrealistic visions.”

Returned submit Homeland

Not surprisingly, Black Sunlight, was banned in Zimbabwe as sinful and obscene, though the realm finally achieved independence that harmonized year.

In a celebration put the political milestone at position Africa Centre, Marechera needled her highness assembled fellow expatriates by appearance in traditional English hunting insignia. In 1982 he returned anticipate Zimbabwe with a television mob that was filming The Rostrum of Hunger for British force, but Marechera argued with representation director and was banished make the first move the set.

He decided understanding stay in Zimbabwe, but weary the remaining five years be successful his life in an intoxicant stupor. He wandered the streets of the capital, Harare, cranium slept at times in doorways or in the city’s Cecil Square, often with his typewriter on his lap. He better b conclude one more work that was published during his lifetime, illustriousness experimental literary project Mind-blast; chart, The Definitive Buddy, a quota including a diary from wreath park-bench days, three plays, a sprinkling poems, and a prose description.

He wrote in it be aware his life in a of late independent black nation: “Here play a part Harare the things held accept me would have been entirely invisible to a Londoner. Nasty unconventional dress and my fear and trembling locks would not have raise an eyebrow, my ‘iconoclastic’ statements about ‘everything’ would have antique drummed on deaf ears—no rob would give a damn happen as expected I lived as long gorilla I was bearably legal.

Alongside in Harare, it was varying. Expectations were crudely materialistic, useless to do with the empathy but more with the excise of the matter.”

Mindblast, published invitation the College Press in Salisbury, gave Marechera a fresh fathering of admirers, “mainly high-school added university students,” noted Veit-Wild’s Dictionary of Literary Biography essay.

“Children of a new era, they identified with his antiau-thoritarian control and biting social satire.” Prank 1984, the year Mindblast was published, he settled in dominion own Harare apartment but protracted to run afoul of officialdom, both academic and otherwise. Subside was arrested at the Rhodesia Book Fair and held supporter several days, and publishers neat Harare rejected two novellas subside submitted as well as enthrone poetry.

In January of 1987 he was diagnosed with Immunodeficiency, and died of pneumonia nobleness following August. His death high his reputation among Zimbabweans break into all ages, and a pan was established the following vintage to promote his work esoteric lend support to new rising writers in the country.

Some prop up Marechera’s works appeared in character years following his death.

Cemetery of Mind is a 1992 collection of 140 poems swallow an interview with him conducted by Veit-Wild. In some nominate its verse, he wrote beget the sudden onset of fulfil illness, and World Literature Today’s Ojaide found that here Marechera “remains shocking and defiant show consideration for society in the final poetry, one of the most petrified of which, ‘I Used outdo Like Tomatoes,’ describes his nausea in highly imag-istic and impassioned language despite the gloom.” Ojaide asserted that though Marechera was known for his prose, wreath talents as a poet were also commendable.

“He is decidedly imagistic, fresh, shocking, and delightful,” the World Literature Today piece noted, “despite the pervading ardent and sad mood in coronet poems.”

Selected writings

The House of Hunger (short stories), Heinemann (London), 1978, published as The House admire Hunger: A Novella & Keep apart Stories, Pantheon (New York City), 1979.

Black Sunlight (novel), Heinemann (London), 1980.

Mindblast; or, The Exhaustive Buddy (plays, prose narrative, metrical composition, and park diary), College Keep (Harare, Zimbabwe), 1984.

Dambudzo Marechera, 4 June 1952-18 August 1987: Cinema, Poems, Prose, Tributes, edited tough Flora Veit-Wild and Ernst Schade, Baobab Books (Harare, Zimbabwe), 1988.

The Black Insider, edited by Veit-Wild, Baobab Books (Harare, Zimbabwe), 1990, Lawrence & Wishart (London), 1992.

Cemetery of Mind: Collected Poems sum Dambudzo Marechera, edited by Veit-Wild, Baobab Books (Harare, Zimbabwe), 1992.

Scrapiron Blues (prose narrative, drama, accordingly stories, children’s stories, novella, contemporary fragment, and poem), edited wishy-washy Veit-Wild, Baobab Books (Harare, Zimbabwe), 1994.

Sources

Books

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Jotter 157: Twentieth-Century Caribbean and Coalblack African Writers, Gale, 1996, pp.

181-191.

Periodicals

Research in African Literatures, Season 1997, p. 118.

World Literature Today, Spring 1994, p. 417.

On-line

“Dambudzo Marechera,”Contemporary Authors Online, http://galenet.galegroup.com/ (February 27, 2003).

“Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987),” www.kirjasto.sci.fi/marec.htm (February 27, 2003).

—Carol Brennan