Please text me.
I am in a mess and need friends quickly.
And perhaps tobacco...
Dambudzo Marechera
Please text or email any anecdotes, voice notes, memes, photos, playlists, book titles, or anything to think about Marechera to the WhatsApp number below or email them to:
What do we talk about when we talk about Dambudzo Marechera
So enduring is Dambudzo Marechera's reputation as the enfant terrible of African literature, yet he is mostly misunderstood. If Marechera had not existed, Zimbabwe would have invented him. And to a degree we have. The person may have been real but the legend that is Dambudzo Marechera, who was part rebel, part iconoclast, is a mountain high papier-mâché god we have all created. These constructions of Marechera have been ignored or erased in the prevailing scholarship of the author. This is a three part crowd sourced project, which complicates Marechera's biography as has been officially told through DAMBUDZO MARECHERA: A Source Book of his Life and Work first published in 1992 in Harare to embrace other plural voices.
Part 1:
Marechera as created by the press.
Part 2:
Marechera as remembered by young writers across Zimbabwe.
Part 3:
Marechera as everyone’s buddy.
Curated and edited by Dr. Tinashe Mushakavanhu
Site design by Aidan Quinlan with the consultation of Nontsikelelo Mutiti
Images from the Dambudzo Marechera Archive of Humboldt University