We’re thrilled to be working with Faber & Faber and Manchester Central Library to host the launch of Tsitsi Danagarembga’s BLACK AND FEMALE – the staggering new collection of essays from ‘one of the most remarkable people the Booker Prize has ever celebrated’ (New Statesman). Tsitsi will be in conversation with Naomi Frisby.

About the book:

Being categorised as black and female does not constrain my writing. Writing assures me that I am more than merely blackness and femaleness. Writing assures me I am.

This paradigm shifting essay collection weaves the personal and political in an illuminating exploration of internationally acclaimed novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga’s complex relationship with race and gender. At once philosophical, intimate and urgent, Dangarmebga’s landmark essays address the profound cultural and political questions that underpin her novels for the first time.

From her experience of life with a foster family in Dover and the difficulty of finding a publisher as a young Zimbabwean novelist, to the ways in which colonialism continues to disrupt the lives and minds of those subjugated by empire, Dangarembga writes to recenter marginalised voices.

Black and Female offers a powerful vision toward re-membering – to use Toni Morrison’s word – those whose identities and experiences continue to be fractured by the intersections of history, race and gender.

About the author:

Tsitsi Dangarembga is the author of three novels, including Nervous Conditions, winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and This Mournable Body, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. She is also a filmmaker, playwright, and the director of the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa Trust. She lives in Harare, Zimbabwe.

This event is being held at Manchester Central Library.

Doors: 18.00, event starts: 18.30

Tickets are £7.00 (£5.00 Unwaged, Student, 60+) or free when pre-ordering a copy of the book. BLACK AND FEMALE will also be available to purchase on the night and Tsitsi will be signing copies after the talk. If you would like a signed copy but cannot make the event, please contact us on 0161 274 3331 or manchester@blackwell.co.uk and we can arrange this for you.