was not concerned that freedom fighters were referred to as terrorists, did not demand proof of God’s existence nor did I think that the missionaries, along with all the other Whites in Rhodesia, ought to have stayed at home.
This sentence is easy to miss, but it shows what Tambu’s “good girl” behavior costs her. She is praised as a model daughter because of what she does not question: the labeling of freedom fighters as terrorists (colonial politics), God’s existence (religion), and the missionaries’ place in Rhodesia (race). The book’s central tension is that being “well-behaved” depends on not noticing injustice. Babamukuru rewards that silence, while Nyasha is punished for asking exactly these questions. The older narrator is criticizing her younger self here, since the passage reads as a list of everything she failed to see. This suggests the book is about political awareness as much as gender.