A review by mahtzahgay
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that.

Bulawayo's We Need New Names is less a novel about the experience of Darling moving to America and more about the history and struggle of a country and her displaced people. Without pity, Bulawayo paints the reality of Zimbabwe's people and the experience of immigration for colonized people's. All the characters are rendered as their whole selves; not perfect victims, or overly-gentle idealists, but flawed and multi-faceted people who are just trying to survive their circumstances in a world (or, worlds) that seems both too large and intimately small.

Darling is not a endlessly kind character: but she is a realised one. Her musings on identity, politics, capitalism, gender, immigration etc read like the real opinions of first a ten year old, to teenager, and finally a young adult just beginning community college.

I think what I appreciate most about how Darling is written, is that she's not an activist, or a visionary, or a saint. She's just a young girl/woman, coming to terms with herself and the two countries she's displaced between, missing home.


Read for uni.