DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES: URBAN GEOGRAPHY IN YVONNE VERA’S WITHOUT A NAME

Abstract

Initially, African writers confirmed social and political commitment by using their literary texts to celebrate the heroic grandeur of African past and anti-colonial struggle. Currently the writers have shifted their focus to depict the postcolonial disillusionment among African nations. Yvonne Vera’s Without a Name is appreciated for its lyricism and interiority. In this paper, an attempt is made to examine how the text, both thematically and stylistically, presents pathologized urban life that engages in the oppression on its dwellers. With the context of political and financial crisis in 1970s Zimbabwe when death and decay overwhelm the existence, the phenomenon of stressful and hectic existence that accompany it aggravate the situation. I read Mazvita’s shift to Harare as an attempt to run away from Nyenyedzi’s idealization of the land to urban anonymity and upward mobility, where there is unquestionable dominance of human reason, in hope to forget her painful past. Female resistance and heroism are represented through the protagonist who gets inspired by the centre of the city but is disillusioned to see the margins of the urban space. The city which is considered to be a symbol of development is essentially characterised by indifference, emotional deprivation, flatness and hollowness. The crisis of humanity is accentuated by non-linear story line of a woman’s life that dreams for freedom but confronts unexpected nightmarish life, masked under the garb of glamorous and colourful of city life.