Tambu

Tambu's experiences of the traumas inflicted through the colonial education system and a colonial war illuminate the conventions of education. The Book of Not, thus far, appears to present this organization of unraveling or unbecoming of something. It almost seems as though Tambu is no longer who she is. She once criticized Nyasha but seems to undergo the very same conditions her cousin experienced. I'm disappointed in Tambu, for she loses her identity. She no longer has feelings or attachments to what is truly the essence of being who she is supposed to be proud of, a strong African women. There's no agency in Tambu's life, and all hope is gone. Dangarembga makes Tambu completely incapable. She's derailed to some path of psychological damage where she internalizes with European views that make her inferior to everything, even inanimate objects.

At this point, I feel as if Tambu degrades herself. I'm am left in knots just trying to understand her. The really significant thing about this is that I sometimes forget the words are expressed at Tambu sees it.

As she says, more than once: "What I was most interested in was myself and what I would become." The novel's irony is that Tambu doesn't see how false and unachievable her goal is and the very goals that are simply possible, she fails to realize. It's so amazing that being black in a Tambu's white world is wrong but ironically the whites are in her black world - Africa.