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 …
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Citation: Pucherova, Dobrota. "Dambudzo Marechera". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 November 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12088, accessed 23 November 2024.]
