Young girl hustlin': a "We Need New Names" review
Sometimes I find out about books when they're mentioned secondhand to me. My brother read NoViolet Bulawayo's debut novel, We Need New Names, for a coming of age-themed creative writing class last year and really liked it. He kept his copy around, and considering the world we're living in right now, I figured now would be a better time than ever to support BIPOC authors by reading their work and sharing my thoughts to boost it. I promise this will lead into further reading and purchasing of BIPOC titles in the future. Bulawayo's debut seemed like a good place to start.
We Need New Names is a gripping and compelling work of literary fiction. Bulawayo follows a ten-year-old Zimbabwean girl named Darling from her late childhood in a shantytown to her teenage years in America with her aunt. The novel is a bleak look at how a fractured life leads to dreams of a better place and what happens when those dreams turn out to be unattainable. Although lacking a narrative-driven plot, Darling is a strong narrator. The world through her eyes, the bleak Zimbabwe and the sleek America, retains a childlike naivete, even as the horrors of both lie just beneath the surface. Each chapter feels like its own story, a portrait of a moment in Darling's life that's rendered powerful by itself and within the book as a whole. Bulawayo's prose is also fantastic, capturing Darling's playful nature that never fades, even as she grows more disillusioned and detached the older she gets. While a step-by-step trajectory would have benefited this novel more in my eyes, Bulawayo's We Need New Names is solid and should definitely be added to your TBR.
In the rundown village of Paradise, Darling and her friends spend their days stealing guavas, playing games, and waiting the arrival of the NGO truck (hopefully it comes every month). Before Paradise, Darling lived in relative peace with her father, mother, and grandmother in a different town, but then her father left for South Africa, paramilitary police destroyed everything, and schools closed their doors. Now, Darling, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho, and Stina wander the streets of the affluent community they call Budapest, play Country-Game, and do whatever they feel is necessary to pass the time. Darling hopes that one day, she'll be able to go over to America to live with her aunt. Once there, she'll have the life she and the other kids fantasize about whenever they hang out. When Darling hits her teenage years, Aunt Fostalina brings her to Detroit, Michigan, and Darling realizes that the America she envisioned for so many years isn't all it's cracked up to be. But that doesn't stop her from assimilating, hoping to get somewhere close to what she envisioned when she was young.
Darling is an engaging lead throughout We Need New Names. Her arc is a fascinating one, particularly because as she ages, she never loses this wide-eyed fascination with the world around her. The girl we meet amidst the fray of Zimbabwe nationalists taking back their rightful property is the same young woman who scribbles marker on her wallpaper and doesn't quite wipe it all away. Bulawayo's prose captures this wonderfully, utilizing rhythm to make each word punch. This also creates stark sentences and sharp observations; sometimes these even come through in ways only Darling and her friends can decipher. It leads to experiences that flow off the page.
Speaking of those experiences, the way We Need New Names is structured was new for me. While following a linear timeline, each chapter offers a standalone snapshot of Darling's life. I found myself more fascinated with some of the chapters over others (two in particular, one where Darling attempts to abort Chipo's baby with another girl and a clothing hanger, and another where immigrants collect under one voice to share their experiences in America, were my favorites due to how horrific and beautiful Bulawayo rendered each), but they come together well within the context of the novel, as each involves Darling and her story in some capacity. While the stories sometimes feel scattered, they follow a standard trajectory for a novel, and the trajectory itself has a fierce grip. I do wish more of the gaps were filled throughout the timeline and that Darling's friends were more developed (Chipo's arc was fascinating to read, but I felt she was the only secondary character to get this treatment), but since each chapter is a snapshot peppered with its own distinct details, I understand why Bulawayo didn't pursue that route.
Bulawayo's prose is a highlight throughout the novel. She imbues Darling with a rich voice that balances the maturity she's had to pack on since the paramilitary policemen decimated the town she lived in and the playful nature of a child. Her thematic heft is impeccable as well. Throughout the first half of the book, Bulawayo hints at the promise Darling hopes to see in America, how the secondhand clothes, tin huts, and excruciating guava cramps may give way to something as sophisticated as she and her friends have seen and heard about. However, what she finds isn't what she was expecting. Her aunt has to work multiple jobs to keep their suburban Michigan house running, and her uncle and cousin are pieces of work. Due to her accented English, she's ostracized by the white kids. Although she makes friends with two other Black girls in her middle school, their dynamic is strained at best. Still, Darling tries to assimilate, desperately missing home all the while. Yet a few years later, at the height of her succumbing unhappiness to the very thing she wanted when she was younger, Chipo tells Darling that she doesn't have the right to claim ties with Zimbabwe anymore now that she's been in America for years. Although Darling misses home, she's barely called her friends; because of that, Chipo declares she isn't a Zimbabwean anymore. The very comfort Darling wanted to find in America doesn't exist. It's a chilling and harrowing arc, one that Bulawayo handles beautifully through engaging writing and subtle foreshadowing.
Although Bulawayo's literary debut skirts an expected linear timeline by skipping over details to fill in the spaces, We Need New Names is a gripping read regardless. Darling's experiences idolizing America in Zimbabwe come to a screeching halt once she arrives in the country of her dreams, and Bulawayo's prose punches across the pages as these moments reveal themselves. Add this to your TBR if you want to read more from BIPOC authors, want character and voice-driven literary fiction, or are interested in hearing more on the immigrant experience in America, even in a fictionalized format. You won't be disappointed.