Dambudzo Marechera

Dobrota Pucherova (Slovak Academy of Sciences)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.2.3.03: South Africa and other Southern Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Dates

Born 4 Jun 1952
Died 18 Aug 1987
Activity 1978-1987

Places

Born in Zimbabwe
Active in Zimbabwe

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Playwright / Dramatist
Poet
Story-writer

Resources

Marechera's Works

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Known as the “

enfant terrible

of African literature”, the Zimbabwean Dambudzo Marechera is today recognized as one of Africa's most innovative writers. A social chameleon and a self-defined “intellectual anarchist”, Marechera reacted to the Marxist and nativist tradition in African writing with cosmopolitanism and post-racialism at a time when it was most controversial to do so. “I don't hate being black. I'm just tired of saying it's beautiful”, he famously wrote, rejecting black nationalism that he saw as falling prey to the binary categories set up by colonialism (Marechera 1978, 45). True liberation from oppression, Marechera insisted, could be achieved only through the overcoming of politically-imposed identities and creating space for individual reinvention. Identifying…

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1536 words

Citation: Pucherova, Dobrota. "Dambudzo Marechera". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 November 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12088, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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