{"id":83,"date":"2013-07-06T09:30:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-06T16:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=83"},"modified":"2013-07-06T09:27:25","modified_gmt":"2013-07-06T16:27:25","slug":"zimbabwe-america-and-the-immigrant-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=83","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabwe, America, and the immigrant experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book Review: We Need New Names<\/span> by NoViolet Bulawayo<\/b><\/p>\n

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We Need New Names<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I can\u2019t quite recall where I first heard about this book, but I have been hearing about it a lot lately. I discovered that We Need New Names<\/span> is definitely not being over-hyped; it is awesome. This is probably the first work of Africa-related, contemporary fiction I\u2019ve read since Achebe\u2019s Things Fall Apart<\/span> in high school and it made me feel like I\u2019ve been missing out on something profound and interesting.<\/p>\n

This book is beautifully written. It is just full of amazing imagery. I\u2019m not inclined to gush about such things, but as I was reading this book, I just wanted to drink up all the language and become drunk from it because it was so heady. Even though the story is told from the point of view of a child, the language isn\u2019t necessarily puerile. Darling, the narrator, doesn\u2019t use lots of sophisticated language, but her thoughts are really succinct and what she says makes the reader picture everything. For example, when speaking about the heat she says, \u201cThe sun keeps ironing us and ironing us and ironing us,\u201d which is something I can relate to with the heat wave happening at the moment.\u00a0 In another chapter, Darling is watching a funeral and comments of the cemetery:<\/p>\n

\u201c[It] is mounds and mounds of red earth everywhere, like people are being harvested, like death is maybe waiting behind a rock with a big bag of free food and people are rushing, tripping over each other to get to the front before the handouts run out. That is how it is, the way the dead keep coming and coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all the imagery is morbid, of course, but this example stood out to me because it\u2019s such a mature observation even though it is rooted in kid-logic.<\/p>\n

As to the plot (which is, I suppose, what people want to hear about in a review), the book is told from the perspective of Darling, a girl who lives in Paradise\u2014a shanty town in Zimbabwe. Her observations about life are folded in among vignettes of playing with her friends: Bastard, Godknows, Shbo, Stina, and the pregnant Chipo. Darling dreams of moving to America, a place where everyone has enough food and is rich, and she knows that one day she will because her Aunt Fostalina lives there. The second part of the book focuses on Darling\u2019s life in America (specifically, in \u201cDestroyedmichygen\u201d) and how she copes with the reality of living in the US, works through her identity, and relates to others. The result is both a poignant view of life in modern Zimbabwe and of the immigrant experience in America.<\/p>\n

The first half of We Need New Names<\/span> made me realize how little I know about Zimbabwe specifically and Africa in general. From the way the story is told, the reader can gather that Zimbabwe used to be ruled by a king, but then it was taken over by white colonialists. The colonialists were eventually ousted by the native black people, who were then deposed by another group of black people. That is an extremely rudimentary understanding, but clearly this isn\u2019t a book about politics or history; it\u2019s about one person\u2019s experience in Zimbabwe. I feel like I should be able to at least put names on some of these movements or governments, but I don\u2019t have any in my head. I think that reading up on modern African history is definitely going to be on my to-do list.<\/p>\n

The second half of the book was, in a way, more relatable, just because I am American and Darling\u2019s experiences were easier for me to digest, even though they were through the eyes of someone new to the country. I briefly taught English as a second language when I was a teacher, so I was able to appreciate some of the observations about learning (or improving, more accurately) English. In one scene, Aunt Fostalina is on the phone trying to order something from Victoria\u2019s Secret, but she is not being well-understood. Darling comments about how you can practice what you want to say beforehand, but the words still come out wrong, concluding \u201cEnglish is like a huge iron door and you are always losing the keys.\u201d This is such an amazing way to conceptualize all language learning, but especially English learning.<\/p>\n

Something incidental to the story, but that I really liked, is the concept of a \u201ctalking eye.\u201d Essentially, this is when you look at someone in a way that says something, like when a little dog wearing a pink jacket tries to get attention from Darling and she gives it a talking eye that says \u201cNo, dog, you don\u2019t even know me like that.\u201d Or you could give a talking eye that says \u201cDon\u2019t even think about it,\u201d or \u201cGet over here.\u201d Bulawayo has managed to name something I didn\u2019t know I needed a word for.<\/p>\n

We Need New Names<\/span> is stuffed with observations about life both in Zimbabwe and in America. I really enjoyed Bulawayo\u2019s take on the world and I feel like my worldview has definitely been expanded (which is the point of reading in the first place). There is a lot more in this book that I haven\u2019t discussed because I know I can\u2019t just talk about a whole book, but if anyone who has read it would like to discuss it with me, I would love to talk about it! I will definitely be keeping my eye out for future works by NoViolet Bulawayo.<\/p>\n

What should you read after you\u2019ve finished We Need New Names<\/span>? Here are some things I am thinking of picking up that have similar themes:<\/p>\n