Nationalist Consciousness in Doris Lessing's African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe

Abstract

Doris Lessing's African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe aptly recounts the story of writer’s visits to Zimbabwe in different times. While revisiting her homeland Lessing explores her childhood memories in an isolated farm and the bush, her parents and brother, African traditions and white customs which represent her nationalist consciousness. But even after the independence, she feels herself to be isolated from her best self because she was neglected and treated as ‘other’ by the common blacks. She was exiled for 25 years because of her opposition to the white minority government. Being a white she opposed the white rule and protest for equality but even after the independence she is not taken as a Zimbabwean. But her passion and love for her homeland is not decreased anymore. She tried to unite blacks and whites to build new Zimbabwe. For Lessing, to make nationalism stronger both blacks and white should join the hands together which means racial discrimination should be eliminated.