We Need New Names

Bulawayo is a masterful storyteller. With words that resonate the innocent, raw experiences of childhood to the confused maturity of a young person in a foreign land, this tale takes you on an emotional dune ride. The narrative is fearless, hilarious, poignant and often visceral, with many sparkling passages that jump out at you -- the kind that you can't help but share with the person sitting next to you. Two thumbs up!

This is an unconventionally written book - seemingly on the surface about a kid's world, yet hitting hard in places while seemingly maintaining an irreverence about the extremely prickly issues it speaks about. We’re transported to life in a shanty-town from the view of a young girl and her friends, and how a life which is agonizingly unfair and difficult for an outsider, is looked at by those for whom have to live it themselves, for those for which this is ‘normal’. It’s not a unique narrative style I’m sure, but an incredibly powerful one, one which allows the author to shock and cause us to count our blessings, without ever seeming like sermonising. The protagonist in the second half moves half-way around the world to the United States, to become part of that world of immigrants which then helps us look at the First World from the view of the Third World, and the pains of the immigrant’s journey. Again, not unique – but NoViolet Bulawayo’s style, her characters and her observations make it seem very fresh.This is also one of those books where the moments stay with you longer than the story. Stealing the shoes of a girl who’s just hung herself, watching a white family being slammed out of their ivory towers, what people at the other side of an NGOs camera feel, what young kids and non-believers would be thinking in the middle of a religious fervour, the attempts at home (field?) abortion, the AIDS, the rape, the political murders, the killing of hope – these parts will haunt and stay for sure. The second half of the book is more reflective – the immigrant’s travails, the WTFness of #FirstWorldProblems and the transition for what once seemed your’s suddenly doesn’t remain so and how you become what you thought you weren’t. I loved this part, I’ve read a lot about the Indian and subcontinental immigrant experience thanks to Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandip Ray, Khaled Hosseini et al..but this – without the papers, the legal status and the complete inability to go home is obviously a different one. It all comes up in a magnificent chapter towards the end titled ‘And how they lived’ which should be worth the price of the book just in itself.I note the major criticism of the book online is that it takes a checklist of Third-world/Africa issues and ticks them off one by one. Uhh, I think that’s absolutely kaka(!). Those checklists, those lists of horrors exist for a reason – the narrative of the book allows them all to fit in and it is not too difficult to imagine that the protagonist would have had cause to experience them.PS : I was unable to make up my mind about what I felt about the language. I came about this on the author’s website which seemed so wonderfully apt:)“Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write inEnglish, for we intend to do unheard of things with it”Chinua Achebe

It's a well-written book. Love the cultural nuances, the interactions that happen between the protagonist Darling and her friends, love the analogies. The book's power is its simplicity. A must read for anyone away from home.

good

Para practicar lectura en inglés es una buena opción

Such a great novel. Beautifully written and exploring some really hearty issues including transnational migration. I really enjoyed this one.

This novel is mostly told from the perspective of a child growing up in a slum in Zimbabwe and who then moves to her aunt's place in Michigan.Darling's, the narrator's, voice, drew me in from the first moment, when she tells us about stealing Guavas in a rich neighborhood, about the hunger that motivates her and her friends to do so. The author manages to render a child's perspective so well - the little adventures children experience when they roam without adult supervision, how they try to explain things to themselves to make sense of the world around them.What strikes me most is the humorous quality of Darling's voice. That doesn't mean the book is funny in a silly way. But Darling observes the world around her and she is both a very inquiring and skeptical child. This leads to great passages in the novel, for example when she describes how Americans treat their children (as opposed to the way the African immigrants are used to). Another gem is when she reflects about how Angelina Jolie can travel to any part of the world and just adopt a child and how much she herself would have loved to be adopted by her. All of this happens in a way that just shows the absurdity which is created by the inequalities in our world.The novel is very honest about the situation in Zimbabwe - the hunger, the desperation, how the adults try to maintain hope and dignity in extreme poverty. It is also honest about how moving to the US transforms Darling, because she now partakes in the privileges of living in a rich country.There are some interesting short chapters included in which the narrative voice is a collective "we" of immigrants from poor countries. These I find heartbreaking. They speak of the loss of language, the hard work, and the inability to return to your country, even when your parents die, because some procedure has declared you "illegal".The novel reads more like a collection of short stories which have the same narrator and are arranged in chronological order but that doesn't make the reading any less enjoyable.Absolutely recommended.

Une œuvre réaliste, poignante, servie par une belle plume qui manie l'humour et le tragique avec la même verve et rend son personnage principal terriblement attachant.

This author is a wonderful bright new voice, writing with a language that surprises and pleases and lulls us, and then startles us with another view of Africa, of immigrants, of life in America. I have nothing to compare it to, but I highly recommend it! I will not soon forget Darling, the main character, through whose wyes we see and observe all the tragedy and exhalation, the longing for what can never be recaptured. If you read only one new author in the next year, make it this one!