Quotessence
Home / Authors / Panashe Chigumadzi

Panashe Chigumadzi Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllZimbabweSweet MedicinePovertyEconomic CrisisEconomic HardshipFeminismLifeLoveMarriagePanashe Chigumadzi

Famous Panashe Chigumadzi Quotes

“She was still not at ease with the idea that she was now important enough to have people as accessories. Nor was she comfortable with the idea of these people as gatekeepers with access to the details of their personal lives. Whenever she felt herself shrinking under the indifferent glare of the staff that surrounded her, as she did in this instance, she straightened her back and lifted her chin in the way that Chiedza, her trusted advisor-friend, had instructed her to do.”

MarriageFeminismCheatingZimbabweEconomic CrisisChiedza
Author:Panashe Chigumadzi
Create image

“You look at me and judge me. And I just want to ask, for what? I am in full control. No one has a gun to my head. Why can't this be my profession,one I have chosen for myself? I tell you prostitutes are professional in their skills and practise it like the vocation of true apostles- and why shouldn't they? What's so different from the accountant or the doctor selling his time? I ended up in this profession in the same way someone might end up being a lawyer because the couldn't get into engineering or dentistry,or because they couldn't get into medicine, or even a banker who grew up telling everyone they want to be a soccer player. They do those things because that was what was available for heir talents and their circumstances at that time. But do we pity them? No, because that's lif-”

LifeCareersSurvivalProstitutionSex Work
Book:Sweet Medicine
Create image

“A person is a person through others. This truth extends across time and space. We are through those who have come before us, those who have come with us and those who will come after us. Spirit possession, at the heart of Chimurenga, is an exercise in timelessness. It is those in the present communing with those in the past about the future concerning those who will come. Chimurenga has always been the intergenerational spirit of African self-liberation. It is not linear, it is bones that go into the earth and rise again and again.”

LiberationResurrectionZimbabweChimurenga
Book:These Bones Will Rise Again
Create image

“You know, Tsitsi, you are so quick to point out that you are not a prostitute. I just want to laugh because you are just falling into rank. You all should spare us your ‘morality’ that lauds ‘women’ over the supposedly lesser ‘whores’ and ‘girls’. That’s how society sees us. That’s how you see us. You want it to be that we are like coal, only to be loved in the dark and tossed like ashes come morning.”

LoveMarriageZimbabweEconomic CrisisSweet MedicinePanashe ChigumadziMuti
Book:Sweet Medicine
Create image

“The house may have been impressive in stature, but having gasped as they drove up the driveway, she had been disappointed by the interior. It was so bare. Lacking in things. She was mystified by this invisible wealth and the austerity of the house. She didn’t understand Mrs Zvobgo, she was rich but chose to live, in Tsitsi’s opinion, like a pauper. She was clearly uninterested in buying things. Maybe it was because she had never known poverty. Tsitsi on the other hand felt she was well versed in it. Tsitsi, unlike Mrs Zvobgo, wasn’t above noveau riche vulgarities. She didn’t want any sort of English boarding school minimalism. She wanted more. She wanted things. Things . Things. Things. Many of them. That much she was willing to admit. She made a private decision then that she would change this when she became the woman of this household. She knew they said wealth whispered and rich shouted, but what good was having all that they did if she had to keep it like some sort of secret?”

LoveSecretFeminismSweet MedicinePanashe Chigumadzi
Book:Sweet Medicine
Create image