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fourlittlebees 's review for:
We Need New Names
by NoViolet Bulawayo
It's funny, reading reviews of NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names. On the one hand, you have the fact that this was nominated for many awards, and won most of them. On the other hand, you have a lot of reviewers saying how they felt the book fell short or "wasn't that good."
And while it's true that a lot of award winners are often baffling to even the most critical of readers (I'm still looking at you, Tinkers), We Need New Names is deceptive.
Told in a series of vignettes, each story here focuses on Darling, who we meet as a 10-year-old in her home in Zimbabwe. Through the course of her story, we see the abject poverty she and her friends are growing up in. We see the nonchalant acceptance of children whose friend is pregnant as the result of rape, even knowing that the pregnancy she's carrying will likely kill her in childbirth. We see the perspective of the children when it comes to the relief organizations and how they "help" and the dream of America from an outsider's perspective... and then an illegal immigrant's perspective.
It's a story that seems very simple on its surface, and the language is all Darling's, her stilted English learned in school before she could no longer attend. Her slang-infused English once she gets to America and learns from television and her friends. But what I think most of these "what IS this?" readers are missing is that it's more than the surface. This is a no-holds-barred look at ourselves, at our First-World view of the world and the clay feet that are so hard to see in ourselves.
I read this not long after the 2016 presidential election, so my view may have already been in just the right place to receive the message here. Maybe I was ready to see those clay feet. Maybe I'd already seen them. It's a hard thing, to read such an unrelenting takedown of how much world culture has been affected by the American behemoth, and the reality of what it's like here for those "illegals" everyone seems sure are just sucking public assistance dry, but I'd encourage everyone to take the time to really see it. My eyes may have already been open, but We Need New Names showed me how much more there is to see.
And while it's true that a lot of award winners are often baffling to even the most critical of readers (I'm still looking at you, Tinkers), We Need New Names is deceptive.
Told in a series of vignettes, each story here focuses on Darling, who we meet as a 10-year-old in her home in Zimbabwe. Through the course of her story, we see the abject poverty she and her friends are growing up in. We see the nonchalant acceptance of children whose friend is pregnant as the result of rape, even knowing that the pregnancy she's carrying will likely kill her in childbirth. We see the perspective of the children when it comes to the relief organizations and how they "help" and the dream of America from an outsider's perspective... and then an illegal immigrant's perspective.
It's a story that seems very simple on its surface, and the language is all Darling's, her stilted English learned in school before she could no longer attend. Her slang-infused English once she gets to America and learns from television and her friends. But what I think most of these "what IS this?" readers are missing is that it's more than the surface. This is a no-holds-barred look at ourselves, at our First-World view of the world and the clay feet that are so hard to see in ourselves.
I read this not long after the 2016 presidential election, so my view may have already been in just the right place to receive the message here. Maybe I was ready to see those clay feet. Maybe I'd already seen them. It's a hard thing, to read such an unrelenting takedown of how much world culture has been affected by the American behemoth, and the reality of what it's like here for those "illegals" everyone seems sure are just sucking public assistance dry, but I'd encourage everyone to take the time to really see it. My eyes may have already been open, but We Need New Names showed me how much more there is to see.