Analysis Of Zenzele: A Letter For My Daughter

Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter features both a woman’s search for her own identity while also exploring the relationship between mother and daughter. In the form of a letter, the mother endeavors to teach her daughter a few more lessons before they will be apart from one another for years or longer. Each lesson illuminates her sense of self as well as her view of her in relationship to her daughter, in whom she has great pride. Throughout the letter, Amai Zenzele compares herself to others including her daughter, her sister, her husband, and others she grew up around. She communicates a sense of falling short of others at times. There are questions that Zenzele asks that would have never occurred to Amai Zenzele to ask let alone answer. Her husband and Zenzele debate these kinds of issues while Amai Zenzele enjoys watching from the side, avoiding being asked to contribute. She compares herself to her sister and her active imagination, something that grows into something

Initially, Zenzele brings up the concept to voice her disapproval of the idea. Much of her concern comes out of a modern and Western view of such practices. Zenzele sees it as a man buying his wife as if she were property. Amai Zenzele, on the other hand, though she can understand her daughter’s concerns, can still see it in the customary way it was meant. Through this she is even able to get her daughter to relent with Zenzele saying, “I find it encouraging that our culture actually places great value on an educated, smart woman who has a career” and further, “I guess if submission was the goal, then they would certainly go for the rural, illiterate girls” (Maraire 33). Zenzele may debate in a heated manner, especially with her father, and touch upon subjects beyond Amai Zenzele’s reach, but she can still always be influenced and persuaded gently by her mother’s experience. Both are influential just with different