Dambudzo marechera biography of michaels
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Marechera, Dambudzo 1952–1987
Writer
Rootless and Rough Childhood
Twice Ejected from College
Works Vanished
Returned to Homeland
Selected writings
Sources
Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera left behind just a few acclaimed works before his death from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in 1987. Marechera had a turbulent personal life for many years, with his early literary promise thwarted by mental illness and alcoholism. His first novel, The House of Hunger, was heralded as an exciting new example of postcolonial African writing, and remains his best known work. “With Dambudzo Marechera’s death,” noted World Literature Today critic Tanure Ojaide, “African literature lost a young star whose meteoric appearance has left an illuminating rail.”
Rootless and Rough Childhood
Marechera was born in 1952 and grew up in Vengere Township, when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia, one of the last holdouts of white colonial rule on the Afric
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Dambudzo Marechera (1952 – 1987)
Dambudzo Marechera (4 June 1952 – 18 August 1987) was a Zimbabwean novelist, short story writer, playwright and poet. His short career produced a book of stories, two novels (one published posthumously), a book of plays, prose, and poetry, and a collection of poetry (also posthumous). He was best known for his abrasive, heavily detailed and self-aware writing, which was considered a new frontier in African literature, and his behaviour in the universities he was expelled from which were stated by multiple accounts.
Early life
Charles William Dambudzo Marechera was born in Vhengere Township, Rusape, Zimbabwe (then known as Southern Rhodesia), to Isaac Marechera, a mortuary attendant, and Masvotwa Venenzia Marechera, a maid.
In his 1978 book, The House of Hunger, and in interviews, Marechera often falsely suggests that his father was either run over by “a 20th century train” or “came home with a knife sticking from
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The Digital Afterlives of Dambudzo Marechera
Abstract
Dambudzo Marechera who died in 1987 remains a fascinating phenomenon in African literary culture. He is very much alive in the visual culture in which he circulates digitally. He is at once posthumous, multiple, and contemporary. Even though Marechera did not live to see the 21st century, he left versions of himself that remain both relevant and resonant. This paper considers the various ways Marechera’s digital afterlives manifest and force us to interrogate the intersections of life, death, anställda data and human autonomy and presents a critique of unethical digital resurrection. Who does digital Marechera belong to?
[T]he question of the archive is not […] a question of the past …. It fryst vatten a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow.
Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever1