The novel leaves us without an answer to that particular question; instead, we feel her empty ache from not belonging anywhere—except in her memories of her childhood, before her sense of self splintered in immigration. You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition. Darling and her friends live in a shanty called Paradise, which of course is no such thing. The camera is a potent symbol of differences between wealthy foreigners and poor Zimbabweans, especially the children. NoViolet Bulawayo's debut novel, WE NEED NEW NAMES, is the story of Darling, a young Zimbabwean girl living in a shantytown called 'Paradise'. “Can you just say something in your language?” the woman begins, and goes on to talk at Darling about Africa, using the word beautiful in every breath, and ending with an interrogation about the atrocities in the Congo, about which Darling knows nothing. In the novel’s first chapter, “Hitting Budapest,” Darling and her friends Godknows, Chipo, and Bastard go to the rich neighborhood (Budapest) to steal guavas from the trees, a little like the way some American children go to the rich neighborhoods for better Halloween candy, except Darling and her friends have not eaten all day, and her stomach feels “like somebody just took a shovel and dug everything out.” Bulawayo’s writing is vivid, clear-eyed, alternately laughing and tight-jawed, but it’s her gift for the precise, evocative interaction that immediately sets this novel apart. This is my first time visiting my dad’s country, she says, and twists the chain on her neck. The main character in the novel is Darling. NOVIOLET BULAWAYO was born in Tsholotsho a year after Zimbabwe’s independence from British colonial rule. This shopping feature will continue to load items when the Enter key is pressed. And where are you from? I don’t think that she’s arguing that brutal violence, repeatedly witnessed, becomes regular to the children in the same way we can get desensitized to televised violence: more likely, the children are too young to understand the depth of the brutality, and thank goodness for that. However, they experience a lot of hardship as well. Bulawayo’s novel is not just a stunning piece of literary craftsmanship but also a novel that helps elucidate today’s world -- Felicity Capon, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (Heinemann African Writers Series), AWS Classics The Joys of Motherhood (Heinemann African Writers Series: Classics), Weep Not Child (Heinemann African Writers Series). In these linked stories, she tackles - among other issues - poverty, political oppression, corruption, violence, women's rights, the class systems of Zimbabwe and the United States, and the problems of alienation at home and in a foreign land. Say what? Kristal says, and her voice tells me her face is all scrunched up now but I am not backing off. I half-expected the woman to take Darling’s picture.
The golden head on the chain is a map of Africa. She earned her MFA at Cornell University, where she was also awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship. This Zimbabwean-accented Colonial English of Darling’s keeps her from belonging to any American group without the constant effort of translating her English into Black-Teenage-American-English. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. We notice when she picks up bits of slang, currency for belonging. Laughter as a response to horror is a frequent motif in the first half of the novel. They dream of the paradises of America, Dubai, Europe, where Madonna and Barack Obama and David Beckham live. Chipo’s silence is not from the shame of understanding stigma, we learn, but because she lacks the vocabulary to know, let alone articulate, what happened to her. Bulawayo is loyal to her narrator’s perspective, which changes dramatically over the course of the novel as Darling herself grows from an inquisitive child in Zimbabwe into a lonely teenager in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Important Quotes. And what is naamean? Me? Moreover, their fathers must leave to look for jobs overseas. Learn more. …But you only look fifteen, like a child, Godknows says, looking at the woman now.
Godknows asks [the woman in reply]. In Kalamazoo, Darling struggles to hide African-born behind African-American, but when she snaps at Kristal, she argues that her white, British language is “proper,” better. It symbolizes the vast... eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. At first, I read Chipo’s refusal to speak as a kind of shame. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in. Darling and her friends face constant, inexplicable violence, but I admire Bulawayo’s loyalty to the limits of their perception.
And how old are you? Aunt Fostalina, who strives for assimilation, wears a long white dress to an American wedding, a faux-pas that Darling doesn’t recognize, but that the American reader does.
NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel, We Need New Names (Little, Brown), opens in Paradise, the Zimbabwe shantytown where Darling and her mother have lived since their house was bulldozed by the government. NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel, We Need New Names (Little, Brown), opens in Paradise, the Zimbabwe shantytown where Darling and her mother have lived since their house was bulldozed by the government. Prime members enjoy fast & free shipping, unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Prime Video and many more exclusive benefits. Approved third parties also use these tools in connection with our display of ads.
In Michigan, Darling seems both older than her peers—she is more “worldly” after all, and she has seen horrors that they have not—and younger, of course, because she has so much catching up to do, culturally. Police officers demolish their homes and their school is closed.
Themes. I say, and Marina coughs a fake cough. To Darling, it is all the stuff of fantasy, of laughter, of play: Bin Laden, iPod, What Would Jesus Do? It isn’t all bad, though. But Darling, with her shrewd eye for physical detail and her dancer’s ear for the rhythm of language, is as exceptional as her perspective is, and the few chapters that don’t belong to her tend to recede. Therefore, she goes to the U.S. with the hope of living the American dream; however, she comes to realize that the opportunities for immigrants are limited. Now the only color is in stuff, like the red push-up bra that her Aunt Fostalina struggles to order, on the phone, from a catalog. By this point in her journey, Darling’s embarrassment and indignation is our own. We use cookies and similar tools to enhance your shopping experience, to provide our services, understand how customers use our services so we can make improvements, and display ads. We Need New Names is Darling’s memoir, fragmented into chapters, many of which can stand alone as stories (and are titled as such). After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. Darling has the opportunity to live a better life with her aunt who resides in Detroit, Michigan. What is the cultural effect of photography in We Need New Names? Well, I’m thirty three, and I’m from London. We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo focuses on a 10-year-old Zimbabwean girl named Darling. Well, it’s true, everybody knows you can’t speak proper English. Then, walking home one afternoon, I passed an American Apparel storefront window where a white plastic mannequin wore a tube skirt in the brand’s persistent “Afrika” print, and I thought, What would Darling and Bastard and Godknows make of this cultural branding?