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A review by liralen
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
3.0
Darling is ten, a child of Zimbabwe. She and her friends play in the streets, steal guavas, imitate their elders as best they can. They are children, though, still piecing together their understanding of the world.
Stina said a country is a Coca-Cola bottle that can smash on the floor and disappoint you. When a bottle smashes, you cannot put it back together. (162)
Zimbabwe is not an easy place for any of them to live. There are those who are far better off but they are mostly white people, living in gated communities. To Darling, America—where her aunt now lives—is the epitome of luxury and want-not. She knows that, when she goes to America, her life will get infinitely easier.
In America, roads are like the devil's hands, like God's love, reaching all over, just the sad thing is, they won't really take me home. (193)
It does get easier, and it doesn't. In America, Darling never wants for food. She can go to school. Eventually, she knows, she will be able to go to college. But it is lonely without her mother and her friends; Michigan is cold and grey much of the year; and, as it turns out, you can't go home again. Especially when your visa has expired and you are not in the country legally.
This book was one that worked for me for the same reasons that it didn't, and so my initially enthusiastic response grew more guarded as I read. The story is linear, in that it takes Darling from childhood on up through her teenage years, but Darling is in a way the only constant. Unlike most novels (although quite like real life), many things happen that could be the start of something big, but aren't. Darling's eleven-year-old friend Chipo is pregnant, and the girls try to 'get rid of her stomach'; the kids find a hanged woman; NGO workers come and go; Darling and co. wander around a Chinese construction site and the ransacked house of a white couple. In America, Aunt Fostalina tries to show up a bride at a wedding; Darling and her new friends go for a joyride; relatives call and call and call, always with requests.
Any of these could be the catalyst for conflict, for a sustained narrative arc. They aren't, though. We learn more about some of those things as the book progresses, but not in a dramatic way—it's just how it is. To me, it is a strength and a weakness of the book: on the one hand, I love that it's not so much about events and dramatic things as it is about broader themes like fitting in and where 'home' is. On the other hand, the book didn't really...go anywhere. Or, not in the traditional sense, anyway. Still, it's an interesting look at a time and place, and at an immigrant experience of a child—an experience that does not match the American dream.
Look at them leaving in droves despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong, knowing they will have to sit on one buttock because they must not sit comfortably lest they be asked to rise and leave, knowing they will speak in dampened whispers because they must not let their voices drown those of the owners of the land, knowing they will have to walk on their toes because they must not leave footprints on the new earth lest they be mistaken for those who want to claim the land as theirs. Look at them leaving in droves, arm in arm with loss and lost, look at them leaving in droves. (148)
Stina said a country is a Coca-Cola bottle that can smash on the floor and disappoint you. When a bottle smashes, you cannot put it back together. (162)
Zimbabwe is not an easy place for any of them to live. There are those who are far better off but they are mostly white people, living in gated communities. To Darling, America—where her aunt now lives—is the epitome of luxury and want-not. She knows that, when she goes to America, her life will get infinitely easier.
In America, roads are like the devil's hands, like God's love, reaching all over, just the sad thing is, they won't really take me home. (193)
It does get easier, and it doesn't. In America, Darling never wants for food. She can go to school. Eventually, she knows, she will be able to go to college. But it is lonely without her mother and her friends; Michigan is cold and grey much of the year; and, as it turns out, you can't go home again. Especially when your visa has expired and you are not in the country legally.
This book was one that worked for me for the same reasons that it didn't, and so my initially enthusiastic response grew more guarded as I read. The story is linear, in that it takes Darling from childhood on up through her teenage years, but Darling is in a way the only constant. Unlike most novels (although quite like real life), many things happen that could be the start of something big, but aren't. Darling's eleven-year-old friend Chipo is pregnant, and the girls try to 'get rid of her stomach'; the kids find a hanged woman; NGO workers come and go; Darling and co. wander around a Chinese construction site and the ransacked house of a white couple. In America, Aunt Fostalina tries to show up a bride at a wedding; Darling and her new friends go for a joyride; relatives call and call and call, always with requests.
Any of these could be the catalyst for conflict, for a sustained narrative arc. They aren't, though. We learn more about some of those things as the book progresses, but not in a dramatic way—it's just how it is. To me, it is a strength and a weakness of the book: on the one hand, I love that it's not so much about events and dramatic things as it is about broader themes like fitting in and where 'home' is. On the other hand, the book didn't really...go anywhere. Or, not in the traditional sense, anyway. Still, it's an interesting look at a time and place, and at an immigrant experience of a child—an experience that does not match the American dream.
Look at them leaving in droves despite knowing they will be welcomed with restraint in those strange lands because they do not belong, knowing they will have to sit on one buttock because they must not sit comfortably lest they be asked to rise and leave, knowing they will speak in dampened whispers because they must not let their voices drown those of the owners of the land, knowing they will have to walk on their toes because they must not leave footprints on the new earth lest they be mistaken for those who want to claim the land as theirs. Look at them leaving in droves, arm in arm with loss and lost, look at them leaving in droves. (148)