We Need New Names

We Need New Names is a work of fiction by Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo. It’s her debut novel, which garnered critical praise upon its publication in 2013. Bulawayo’s narrative centers around 10-year-old Darling and her group of friends, in a Zimbabwean shantytown called Paradise, as the group perceptively observes life around them. When Darling later moves to America (a hope she’s long had), she’s confronted with the America of her dreams as it clashes with her reality as an immigrant in a foreign and often hostile land. Themes of loss, identity, struggle, sacrifice, and violence all flesh out the pages of this sobering yet necessary novel. Darling’s humor also adds to the novel’s appeal, a humor that helps to digest some of the weightier topics.

Darling is a 10-year-old girl from Zimbabwe who likes to steal guavas with her friends. Her group of friends includes Bastard, Stina, Godknows, Sbho, and Chipo, and the group travels to nearby cities to steal guavas from trees to satiate their hunger. Early on, the reader learns that Darling is supposed to join her Aunt Fostalina in America sometime soon. This hope, in fact, is a hope of many people in Zimbabwe, especially as the country is suffering from a violent and oppressive government. Many of Darling’s own friends want to leave the country as well, but others don’t have Darling’s opportunity. As Darling waits for the day that she can leave, she comments on her days in Paradise, which is the name of the shantytown where she lives. Darling’s parents lived in a proper brick house once, but police came and bulldozed the neighborhood. Now, Darling and her mother try and get by without the help of her father (who left for South Africa but hasn’t been heard from since).

Darling’s childlike gaze takes issue with many things around her, and her perceptions, as well as those of her friends, are often wise beyond her years. She looks at the discrepancies in religion (she’s been accused of having the spirit of her unruly grandfather who was killed by whites residing within her by Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro); colonization (she thinks whites are stupid for stealing something as large as a country because everyone can tell they stole it); sex (her mother sleeps with a man who isn’t her father and Darling hates how the man snores); and many other issues. Heavier topics that include incest/rape, murder, suicide, AIDS, and displacement are also viewed through her eyes, and these are approached humanely and maturely despite her age and the presence of humor.

The main body of chapters are interspersed by three chapters that are more omniscient in perspective. These chapters help to transition the text from one place to another, such as from Zimbabwe to America. The chapter titles are: “How They Appeared,” “How They Arrived,” and “How They Lived.” These chapters describe the process of displacement, as well as the overall transition from optimistic dreams to sobering reality.

When Darling finally arrives in America, she soon finds that it’s not the America of her dreams. Her childlike concept of America as the land of plenty is both true and false; she’s able to go without being hungry, yet she also finds that her dreams of, say, a Lamborghini, or simply living without worry or concern, are indeed just dreams. She begins working menial labor jobs at a young age to help her aunt, and though she wants to return home to visit, she realizes that, like many other immigrants, she doesn’t possess the proper paperwork to get back into the US if she leaves. As such, she’s little more than a prisoner in this new country of her dreams. In America, Darling faces violence, cultural misunderstandings, homesickness, and doubt as she assimilates, an assimilation that confuses her as she longs for home yet also feels like she’s outgrown her home. In the end, Darling must settle for a version of America that is far less than she dreamt of, and the reader must determine if Darling, like others, is better off for her journey to America. Darling, too, must struggle with the concepts of loss and longing in a country that she will never be able to truly call her own.

NoViolet Bulawayo is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Her debut novel, We Need New Names, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. Bulawayo also won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, the 2014 PEN-Hemingway Award, and the inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2014.