3.73 AVERAGE


This was a compelling book with a lot of promise, but in the end, it completely fizzled out. I was caught up by the story of Darling, a ten-year-old Zimbabwean girl, and her oddly named friends Chipo, Stina, Godknows, Bastard, and Sbho. They had all lived in fairly stable homes with parents until they were caught in the chaos of ? I can’t exactly explain what, because I’m not well-informed about Zimbabwean politics, and Darling herself is unable to clearly articulate whether her home was bulldozed and her life turned upside down due to civil war, corruption, a change in power, or something else altogether. In any case, the maturity, reliance, and wisdom of these children is astonishing and drew me in. Eventually, Darling was able to escape to Michigan, to live with her aunt and uncle. Bulawayo does a great job showing us how difficult it is for a poor, hungry Zimbabwean girl to adjust to the excesses and inconsistencies of life in the U.S. But the story ends abruptly, without Darling even being able to form a stable identity, much less any clue about whether Darling returns to Zimbabwe, gets to go to college in the US, becomes an alcoholic like her uncle, or any other possibility. The abrupt ending, the lack of quotes, and the two brief summary chapters not in Darling’s voice all contributed to my feeling that this could have been, but wasn’t, an amazing novel. Also, to a westerner like me, sure, maybe they did need new names . . . but I don't feel the novel ever addressed the title. The closest was "we need new games."
dark emotional informative inspiring medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Loveable characters: No
emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

I appreciated reading fiction about Zimbabwe during this time in history. So many heartbreaking events in one life! I think the characters could have been developed more. It skipped around a bit for me. Still, The tension of immigrating to a country because of economic and political is one that’s important to hear and done well.
dark funny medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I first read this book in 2021 and had to reread it for my book club in 2024. I had initially given it a two-star rating. This was harsh and I have now upgraded that to 3 stars. My main gripe with the book was the second half when Darling moved to America. The first half which is set in Zimbabwe was exceptionally written. The characters; Darling and her crew were so well articulated and relatable. Kids are kids and kids are far more aware of their realities than adults give them credit for. I fell in love with all the main characters. I loved the kids' friendship. My favourite character was Bastard; a realist and a hell-raiser.

I couldn't connect with the second half of the book set in America. Hence the 3-star rating.
dark emotional reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

NoViolet Bulawayo captures the voice of young Darling so well. I read the entire novel through her eyes, from the 10 year old girl in Zimbabwe to the teen in the US. The prose is deceptively simple: behind Darling’s observations as a child lie so many truths, ones that adults have often blinded themselves to accept.

We Need New Names is Darling’s story, one of displacement and trauma in Zimbabwe, victim of the government named “Operation Murambatsvina”, where homes were bulldozed to the ground for no legitimate reason (other than crushing Mugabe’s opposition groups at the time). But We Need New Names is also a story of immigration, of learning to live in the US, thousands of miles from her closest family and friends, coming of age in a country that is not always what it appears to be on the outside. Both of these parts of Darling’s life are told through the eyes of a child who sees everything but does not always understand what she sees.

I love how NoViolet Bulawayo takes a simple object and makes it so symbolic all through the book. The guava, for example. Darling and her friends are always hungry, so they trek to the rich neighborhoods to steal guavas from the trees there. They gorge on them, even though they know that they will cause painful constipation later on. Later on, the guavas appear again, snuggled across the ocean from Zimbabwe to the Midwest, a sweet reminder of home that Darling can never seem to find elsewhere. I have my own guava, but it’s a watermelon, and I know I will forever be disappointed by every single watermelon that I try here as it will never be as crispy and sweet and perfect as the ones from the land that I miss so much.

I also thoroughly appreciate how NoViolet Bulawayo weaves so many important talking points into the narrative: alcoholism, displacement, belonging and not belonging, culture clashes, school shootings etc. There are many important mentions of how language is often used to define who we are, which I thought was very interesting. There really is a lot to unpack in this novel and it leaves you thinking about it long after you have finished it.

I’ve read several novels by women writers from Zimbabwe this year and each one has struck me in different ways. In my opinion We Need New Names really emphasizes how we never know what someone else’s story is, and we can also never know what is going on in another country unless we have been there, or at least looked so much further than what we are shown. We have so much to learn, so much.

4.5 stars.
challenging emotional hopeful sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

 
This is quite brilliant. It works both as a novel and a collection of related short stories, since each chapter stands alone. 
 
It begins with Darling as a 10-year-old child, living in a marginal neighborhood in a big African city. The country isn’t named, but it’s been through a big political and economic crisis, and many folks have been thrown out of their homes and have found their way into one of these tin-roof dirt-floor houses. Darling is part of a gang of children who are mostly left on their own, while their parents scrape together a living. 
 
It's not easy to write from a child’s point of view, but Bulawayo pulls it off beautifully. We get to know Darling’s friends – Bastard, Godknows, Sbho, Stina, Chipo (who is pregnant, even though she’s an 11-year-old girl). They talk about the world and the way it works, and they play games like Countries, and FindBenLaden. They steal guavas from a nearby rich neighborhood, where, at one point, they encounter a mob targeting all the white settlers (who are mostly children or grandchildren of settlers, at this point). They deal with the NGO folks, who want to take their pictures before they give their scanty gifts. 
 
And then Darling manages to get to the States to live with her aunt Fostalina in Detroit. She’s overstays her visa, and so becomes an illegal alien, and this means she can never go back to visit her family and friends. After all the fantasies about America, the reality is a shock. The novel does a great job of exploring the challenges of trying to belong, when a person is caught between two very different places and cultures. 
 
One chapter, titled “How They Left”, is particularly poignant. Moving away from Darling’s individual viewpoint, it addresses the collective. Let me quote: 
< Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you just cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same. >  
 
This is what it’s like when Darling gets to Michigan. 
< If it wasn’t for that the houses here have heat in them, I think we’d all be killed by now. Killed by this snow and the cold it comes with; it’s not the normal cold that you could just complain about and then move on to other things. No. This cold is not like that. It’s the cold to stop life, to cut you open and blaze your bones. Nobody told me of this cold when I was coming here. Had it been that somebody had taken me aside and explained the cold and its story properly, I just don’t know what I would have done, if I would really have gotten in that plane to come. > 
 
The chapter “How They Lived” goes back to speaking in the collective. 
< When we die, our children will not know how to wail, how to mourn us the right way. They will not go mad with grief, they will not pin black cloth on their arms, they will not spill beer and tobacco on the earth, they will not sing until their voices are hoarse. They will not put our plates and cups on our graves; they will not send us away with mphafa trees, things we need to enter the castle of our ancestors. Because we will not be proper, the spirits will not come running to meet us, and so we will wait and wait and wait – forever waiting in the air like flags of unsung countries. >