By Peace Osemwengie
Title: We Need New Names
Author: NoViolet Bulawayo
Publisher: Regan Arthur Books, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2013
ISBN: 978-0316230810
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, is one book that has shown so much promise and leaves us expectant of what will come from the writer, next. NoViolet Bulawayo is the pen name of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, an expatriate Zimbabwean writer who lives currently in the United States of America. It is a debut novel.
The first chapter of the novel, “Hitting Budapest”, was originally published as a short story in the Boston Review and won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. The book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (2013), Guardian First Book Award shortlist (2013), and a Barnes and Noble Discover Award finalist (2013). The book won the Etisalat Prize for Literature (2013), Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for debut fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction (2013).
The book is a coming of age story and tells the story of 10 year old Darling as she navigates life in the fictional town of Paradise and the troubles that accompany a child growing in a country seized in the grip of hate and terror, all the while hoping for a better life with an aunt in the United States of America. Darling shows us the world through her eyes and we explore what nationalism, culture and identity means to a growing child in a world where uncertainty is the order of the day.
The book opens with a couple of children leaving their little village which is ironically named Paradise to go to the town they are forbidden to step foot in, Budapest. They are going to steal guavas because they are hungry and will die of hunger if they stay in Paradise. They are led by Bastard and included in their company is the pregnant teen, Chipo, Godknows, Darling, Sbho and Stina. They fancy themselves as explorers and carefully select the houses they rob of guavas. They meet a white woman for the first time and their initial awe slowly turns into an anger borne out of hunger and fear and they walk away from the impromptu photo session she starts with them as the models and go ahead on their guava stealing expedition.
The children’s adventures and machinations are a direct consequence of what their community is going through. Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro preys on the people’s hopelessness and perpetuates heretical acts; Darling’s father’s abandonment of the family results in her mother’s neglect of her to a neighbour, Mother of Bones; the community depends on the donations from the NGO people with a pride that quakes beneath the weight of helplessness that is thrust on them by the political situation; brothers and uncles and aunties flee the country to wherever else that they can and send postcards and pictures home when they can. It is the picture of a country that is torn by greed, strife and corruption.
NoViolet Bulawayo has a gift for language as reflected in the names of the characters and her effortless ability to paint humour in the midst of bleak situations. She writes and we can hear the veiled rebuke she gives to those who in their attempt to forget their pain also forget their African-ness, their culture, their spirit. The novel also tells of the numbness that comes with pretending to be something that you are not, the sag in flesh, the hostility and spirit that is stifled beneath the weight of propriety and American values. It tells of forceful acclimatization and a cautious, yet wild exploration of life as a teen growing in the mid-west states of the US.
In a manner of speaking, Darling reminds us of Ifemelu in Chimamanda Adichie’s Americanah, both having to confront the nuances of American society and having to reconcile these new values to inherent traditional values and having to constantly explain that Africa is a continent and not a country as the Americans are wont to speak of the continent as one big country with a huge mix of dark, nameless, poverty stricken people. But, Bulawayo’s style is strictly hers and is refreshing in its prose even as it hits hard at the hypocrisy and fear that is the African lot.
Bulawayo is a refreshing new voice in contemporary African literature and we cannot wait to see what she gives to us next.