Nervous Conditions Next Year

               I think Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangaremdga should be included in the 2013-2014 freshman class curriculum. How do community and culture shape who we are? This is our overall course question throughout the year and has something to do with everything we learn and read. Reading this book is crucial if you keep this same question and guide through the class.

                Nervous Conditions shows the different culture in African communities in the 1900s. This book shows the diffusion of Shona and English culture and what it does to people and also the sexist and inequality ways in their culture at that time. Leaving this story out of the class would make the research question harder to answer without the knowledge and experiences we learned from reading Nervous Conditions.

                In all of the books we have read this year, they all have to do with community and culture. Nation, a book we read for summer reading, has experiences of diffusion of culture and getting along with different people. In Lord of the Flies, the boys on the island have to learn to accommodate with a new community and way of living with people they do not know and Nervous Conditions is basically all about culture and community and how it affects who someone is and how they act.

                In closing, I would like to say that without Nervous Conditions in next year’s plan, you will have to either change the overall question or find another book that answers, how community and culture shape who we are.