In "Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter," by J. Nozipo Maraire, the mother, Shiri, is afraid that Westernized culture will threaten her daughter's desire to live her life according to the cultures of Zimbabwe. After reading the short story about Mukoma Bryon, it becomes apparent to the reader that one of Shiri's major motives for writing the letter to her daughter was to remind her about the importance of Zimbabwe culture and persuade her not to make the same decisions as Mukoma Bryon. However at the same time, she is filled with deep love towards Zenzele and understands her fondness of Western ideology. In a way, this letter is just as important to Shiri as it is to Zenzele because while it provides the motherly advice that Zenzele will always treasure, it also gives Shiri a fighting chance to convince Zenzele to intertwine her education abroad with the roots of her home country and ancestors. Ever since Zenzele was a kid, she would debate with her mother about many things, much of the time about their culture and other times about the world around her. She had always been looking for answers, wanting to explore and understand everything she could. Even her mother had a hard time keeping up with her in a conversation. She said, "In your company, I often feel blind, groping for firm objects, hesitant lest I collide with some obstacle I cannot characterize, let alone surmount  (Maraire 4). Zenzele has this burning desire for knowledge that her mother could not fathom and this desire was forged during the time between Shiri's and Zenzele's generation. Shiri often thought to herself, "It was as if I had skipped through some critical developmental milestone in the metamorphoses from precolonial clone into the post-independence Zimbabwe, and she was exactly right (Maraire 77). Shiri lived in a time when her country was not very industrialized and because of this her family was heavily in touch with tradition and culture, so she never had the opportunity to develop the thirst fo