Confronting Scenarios in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s She No Longer Weeps

Abstract

The paper explores the role of the play titled She No Longer Weeps by Tsitsi Dangarembga in interrogating the prevailing status quo of, what the paper refers to as, the “scenarios.” In this paper, we focus on how the play facilitates and shapes social change in independent Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Whereas it is undeniable that social change occurs at various levels in society, we concentrate on the change that occurs in the domestic space of the family and/or home, and specifically in gender power relations, as this is the play’s main focus. The paper argues that She No Longer Weeps represents a discussion about ways in which characters attempt to change and/or resist the transformation of the Zimbabwean society. Relying on textual analysis and the historical and material conditions that informed the dramatist’s vision, the paper concludes that gender power relations, as in Zimbabwe in the 1980s, need to be rethought and transformed, but we also question the dramatist’s wholesale acceptance of radical feminism. We conclude by rejecting radical and/or Western feminism in favour of Africana womanism as the latter encourages co-existence and understanding between men and women within the family institution.