Il Tolomeo Rivista di studi postcoloniali | A Postcolonial Studies Journal | Journal d’études postcoloniales | Revista de estudos pós-coloniais

Journal | Il Tolomeo
Journal issue | 18 | 2016
Research Article | Voci per la biografia di un paese

Voci per la biografia di un paese

La narrativa polifonica di Yvonne Vera e la storia dello Zimbabwe

Abstract

The whole of Yvonne Vera’s narrative production (five published novels and a number of short stories) is steeped in the history of her own country. Though faithful to historical facts, Vera choses to focus her attention on individual lives, giving voice, she says, to those who are not given voice by the official treatment of history. Never forgetting the Pre-Colonial past of Zimbabwe, from her first novel, Nehanda, to the fifth, The Stone Virgins, Vera makes her characters fight against the harsh social and cultural imprisonment of Colonialism as well as against the atavistic patterns of African culture. While she shows that women are predestined victims, overpowered as they are by hostile realities especially when they try to break their fetters, Vera creates also epitomic male characters. Especially in The Stone Virgins, the four agonistes, two sister and two men unknown one to the other, represent Zimbabwe’s predicament after Independence. The core of Vera’s research is how to remember and yet overcome the past. One of the two men, a Chimurenga former fighter, falls into the pit of violence and death, unable to accept the challenge of freedom and life; the other, an anthropologist and historian, directs all his efforts towards the future, including in the future of his country the imperative of the restoration of the past: the last word of The Stone Virgins is “deliverance”.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: Sept. 4, 2016 | Accepted: Oct. 25, 2016 | Published Dec. 19, 2016 | Language: it

Keywords Zimbabwe • History • Yvonne Vera • Deliverance • Chimurenga

Copyright © 2016 Francesca Romana Paci. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2499-5975/Tol-18-16-13


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