The Unbearable Whiteness of Being

For all that Zimbabwe's white farmers have received considerable attention from academics and journalists, the fact that they themselves have played a dynamic role in cataloguing and representing their affairs and opinions has gone unremarked. It is this crucial dimension that Rory Pilossof explores in The unbearable whiteness of Being. His examination of farmers' voices - in The Farmer magazine, in memoirs, and in recent interviews - reveals continuities as well as breaks in their relationships with land, belonging and race. His focus on the Liberation War, Operation Gukurahundi and the post-2000 land invasions frames a nuanced understanding of how white farmers engaged with the land and its peoples, and the political changes of the last 40 years. The Unbearable whiteness of Being helps to explain why many of the events in the countryside unfolded in the ways they did.