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Charms, Blessings and Compromises: Black Women’s Bodies and Decolonization in Panashe Chigumadzi’s Sweet Medicine*

In Panashe Chigumadzi’s debut novel, Sweet Medicine (2015. Johannesburg: BlackBird Books), the young black protagonist overcomes the drawbacks associated with her ‘Strong Rural Background’ by acquiring a mission-school education and a degree in Economics, leading to a job in Harare, Zimbabwe. However, as the country is in the throes of its 2008 economic crisis, Tsitsi’s education and employment fail to provide for her economic needs. This failure prompts her to compromise her Catholic values by using her charms to seduce an older, married man. When she fears his attention has strayed elsewhere, she turns to a traditional healer for charms to overcome her rival and ensure the devotion of her ‘blesser’ by means of pregnancy. Sweet Medicine dramatizes issues including opportunities offered in an urban context, conflicts between traditional and modern modes of behaviour, and somatic and emotional options open to women in a patriarchal, corrupt social system. This article first contextualizes the setting of the novel and provides a literary critical background. It then proceeds to analyse the text in terms of five characteristic features of Zimbabwean literature: representations of the city, social criticism, doubles, potent spiritual mediumship and creative spaces for women authors. I draw upon theories of postcolonial feminism, including Chikwenye Ogunyemi’s analysis of the power of black women as authors and characters in Juju Fission (2007. New York: Peter Lang). I explore possible readings of the novel as cautionary tale, an exercise in cynicism, or a call for equality and social justice, concluding that the most apposite interpretation of the text pays attention to the effects of the limitation of choice when suffering from poverty, particularly for women in urban settings.