History And The Voiceless

This study entitled, "History and the Voiceless: Yvonne Vera and Postcolonial Zimbabwe," essentially examines Yvonne Vera's preoccupation with Zimbabwean history in her five novels, namely - Nehanda, Without a Name, Under the Tongue, Butterfly Burning and The Stone Virgins. The study makes analyses of the historical narratives in line with feminist postcolonial literary disourse. It investigates the novels as primarily Vera's critique of both colonial and postcolonial rules and pursues the thesis that the Zimbabwean historical first and second 'Chimurenga' compounded the already unfulfilled lives of women as the marginalized and bottled-up group that is typical of many patriarchal African societies. It therefore explores the writer's depiction of particularly the female characters of her novels as the fatalistic aftermath of both the colonial and postcolonial upheavals. The study reveals and labels Yvonne Vera's feminist endeavour as being peculiar because of some distinct qualities that distinguish her from other feminist writers.