We Need New Names

Written by NoViolet Bulawayo

Narrated by Robin Miles

'To play the country-game, we have to choose a country. Everybody wants to be the USA and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and them. Nobody wants to be rags of countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Haiti and not even this one we live in - who wants to be a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart?'

Darling and her friends live in a shanty called Paradise, which of course is no such thing. It isn't all bad, though. There's mischief and adventure, games of Find bin Laden, stealing guavas, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices.

They dream of the paradises of America, Dubai, Europe, where Madonna and Barack Obama and David Beckham live. For Darling, that dream will come true. But, like the thousands of people all over the world trying to forge new lives far from home, Darling finds this new paradise brings its own set of challenges - for her and also for those she's left behind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House UK Audio
• Release date: Jun 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781448179800

NoViolet Bulawayo

NoViolet's story 'Hitting Budapest,' won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing. NoViolet's other work has been shortlisted for the 2009 SA PEN Studzinsi Award, and has appeared in Callaloo, The Boston Review, Newsweek, and The Warwick Review, as well as in anthologies in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the UK. NoViolet earned her MFA at Cornell University, where her work has been recognized with a Truman Capote Fellowship. NoViolet was born and raised in Zimbabwe.

Reviews for We Need New Names

[kaitanya64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When the story opens, 10 year old Darling lives with her mother and grandmother in Zimbabwe. Darling, like all children, has a vivid imagination and loves to play with her friends. But the violence and poverty that surrounds them exposes them to fears and pressures that most children never experience. When Darling goes to America to live with her aunt in Michigan, she leaves behind physical hunger and many dangers. But, as her experiences illustrate, there are many other kinds of poverty. Readable and compelling, Darling's story is beautifully individual but also represents the life of many in Zimbabwe and in the African immigrant community in the United States.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Brutal Africa and some of the challenges of getting settled in America for a migrant.

[autumnturner · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

DNF. Very boring.

[bodagirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely loved it! Bulawayo puts a face on the immigrant/refugee issue with such compassion and authenticity.

[smits_52 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

10 year old Darling's voice rings out in this novel. It is as close as I can get to being with her in a shantytown in Zimbabwe. Important issues of poverty, corruption ,country's independence and elections, family and friends all as seen though a young girls eyes. We travel with Darling to America and learn of the mixed rewards of living in a land of plenty,This novel has a lot to say and we should listen.

[loveatfirstbook · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo is a collection of short stories or essays in sequential order that make up a novel. The stories are gritty and honest, about an African girl named Darling, who is struggling with her culture and ready to go to America.I loved this novel. It kind of reminded me of my favorite collection of short stories, Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan, which contains stories of struggling African children in some questionable situations. For the full review, visit Love at First Book

[bostonseanachie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We Need New Names is a lush, language-rich narration by a young African girl who gradually becomes an expat in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The narrator's voice has a wonderful innocence, even as she and her playmates (I'd say schoolmates but the teachers have all left the country and the school closed) play such games as "Find Bin Laden." She also has a special gift for capturing expressions on other characters' faces: "like she was hearing music inside her head and dancing to it" is a description of the expression of an aunt who has been complimented by an old flame who is marrying someone else.

The disintegration of the home country, the desperate desire to be somewhere else, and the bitterness of those left behind are rendered in muscular, lyrical prose studded with native ("our language" which is never identified) and childish phrases. The description of eating the guavas (on which she used to gorge herself as a child) for the first time since coming to the U.S. Is worth the price of admission: funny, tender, voracious, and yearning.

The only piece of this novel that hit a sour note for me was a chapter at the end of the book narrated by a "we" rather than the "I" in every other chapter. It consisted of a lyrical, wild description of the labor of largely undocumented newcomers to the US. While beautiful in its own right, and easily capable of being a brilliant standalone essay, it was oddly out of place, especially as our narrator herself had barely begun to work. It sounded like an angry political squawk in an otherwise equally powerful but more subtle birdsong that is ultimately more personal and persuasive.

[kale.dyer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Brutal Africa and some of the challenges of getting settled in America for a migrant.

[lamotamant · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Most of the criticism I've seen for this book is that the author crammed too much into it. I get that; a lot is covered in this book that could certainly have been covered in more depth than it offers. However, as I got into the book I was kind of glad that there was so much crammed in because it made me feel like I was reading a book that was written from a child's/preteen's/teen's perspective. Just like the language used, the imagery, the almost visceral reaction to snow, etc. drew me into the book, into the character in different ways.

I didn't sit back and go, wow, I'm very well informed about everything in Africa and it's countries. I sat back from the book and thought about a life I haven't lived, what I've experienced that identified with the character or what I couldn't identify with, and, because I'm very much in love with books that inspire further reading and learning, I added things to my list to further explore that I might not have without the help of Bulawayo's work. So, for me, this was a really good and interesting read.

A kid doesn't pop out of Zimbabwe knowing everything about the political climate and current state of affairs. She knows about stealing guavas with her friends because they are hungry, she knows about red dust coating her feet, and how to smile for a camera as if that's her payment for the gifts the NPO bring even if it's the last thing she wants to do. She knows how she's been taught, she knows the stories she's grown up on, knows that "America" is supposed to be better. She knows people are getting killed, getting arrested, not because she reads the paper every day or tunes into the BBC but because she witnesses events up close and hangs around in a tree during a funeral where a mother falls apart. Her world is crammed with every sense and every crisis she is surrounded by. So, to tell her story, we read a book that is crammed in the same way. For me, that made sense and made it seem genuine. I feel like Bulawayo captured the essence of being young and experiencing life, not for an anonymous girl from Zimbabwe but for Darling in particular.

With all that being said, I really can't wait to read more from Bulawayo. I think she's a young writer with enormous potential because she seems to have a rather good grip on the psychology of her characters.

[jayne_charles_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A rare insight into life in Zimbabwe in recent years, I have found this a challenge to review as at times I found it fascinating, at others confusing. There are two distinct phases - the first, where the narrator Darling is growing up in a shanty town after her family's home was destroyed, has an exuberance about it, as childhood games intersperse with shocking and violent events. The second has a sort of bleak eloquence as Darling starts a new life in the USA, living with relatives and reflecting on the effect on her culture of the mass exodus of people as conditions back home become steadily more intolerable. There were many sections I found striking; one in particular was where Darling reflects on the history of her country: "There are four homes inside Mother of Bones's head: home before the white people came to steal the country, and a king ruled; home when the white people came to steal the country and then there was war; home when black people got our stolen country back after independence; and then the home of now." It brought into focus the turbulent history of Zimbabwe just within living memory. There were times, though, when I feared I was not really getting the message of this novel; no more so than at the end . The image with which it leaves its readers is such that some interpretation is needed, and I guess it comes down to the confidence with which you make that interpretation, whether you feel a sense of closure or not.

[michellebarton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Excellent narration on the audio version!

[meredy_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Six-word review: Zimbabwe girl adapts to American life.Extended review:There's no way I can describe this book that isn't going to result in distortion. I hope I don't do it an injustice by trying.It's not that my comments simplify too much. It's that I can't simplify enough.Here we have a novel characterized by such a feeling of raw authenticity that it's hard to believe any of it is made up; but it would grossly devalue the author's command of her subject matter and her medium to suggest that--even if it were all literally, objectively factual--it was rendered with anything less than artistry. That would be like saying, "What's so special about a Rembrandt or a Vermeer? He just painted what was in front of him."In Emily St. John Mandel's novel The Singer's Gun, the focal character ponders "the most obvious, possibly even the most important question you could ever ask anyone--How were you formed? What forged you?" (page 47). The answer to that same question is the core of Bulawayo's novel.The first half of the book takes place in Zimbabwe, a suffering nation burdened by poverty, disease, despair, and political chaos. As a child and a young girl, Darling understands her environment and knows how to live in it. She has her tight circle of friends, children as savvy as she, whose daring expeditions, appearing lawless, reckless, and wild, are necessary for survival.At the age of 13 she moves to Michigan to live with her aunt, and she must learn all over again how to live.The expectation of a better life in America is quickly smothered by the reality of being a stranger in a strange land, ignorant of the language and the culture and lacking the means to rise above the most menial sort of work. Is the gain of a chance to make it in the U.S. worth the loss of friends and family and the sense of knowing who she is, of being where she belongs?Bulawayo's narrative is enriched by startling, evocative figures of speech, perhaps only possible for someone writing in a second language that is profoundly different from her mothertongue. Here is an example chosen almost at random, by flipping the pages:Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised. When we talked, our tongues thrashed madly in our mouths, staggered like drunken men. Because we were not using our languages we said things we did not mean; what we really wanted to say remained folded inside, trapped. In America we did not always have the words. It was only when we were by ourselves that we spoke in our real voices. When we were alone we summoned the horses of our language and mounted their backs and galloped past skyscrapers. Always, we were reluctant to come back down. (page 242)The themes of friendship, family bonds, disappointed expectations, loss, adaptation, and survival are all expressed within a cultural context that is very far from what most of us know and understand. I won't insult the author by imagining that I understand it. But perhaps I have gained something in sensitivity to what it means to cross that divide.

[tnociti-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Just fabulous. The first voice of Darling is precocious, precious, fresh, sassy, scared, confident, know-it-all....everything a 10 yr old should be. As she grows, the author remains true to her essence but there is a hardness that comes with being an immigrant. America is not what she had thought it was going to be. Leaving home was not as she had anticipated. Felt very true...and brutal.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

We Need New Names by Noviolet Bulawayo is the story of Darling, a young Zimbabwean girl who is moved from her native country to Detroit, Michigan. While in her own country, Darling roamed the streets of her town, called Paradise, having adventures with her friends. From stealing guavas to playing games like ‘Find Bin Laden’ or ‘The Country Game’ her life was one of friendship, belonging and being comfortable in one‘s own skin. Of course it was not all fun and light, these children were always hungry, Aids was commonplace and violence could erupt at any minute.Belonging is the farthest thing from her mind when she finds herself in Detroit, Michigan living with her aunt, her aunt’s live-in boyfriend and the boyfriend’s son, TJ. I didn’t enjoy the second half of the book as much as the first, finding it rather disjointed. The author’s ease with Africa and the vivid descriptions seem to fade away when Darling comes to America. Now the descriptions seem trite and mundane from the strangeness of snow, to the throw-away society of video games, television and movies. While violence and danger exist in both these worlds, Darling must learn to be able to navigate her way and overcome her feeling of immigrant displacement. An interesting coming-of-age story that is told in a unique voice. We Need New Names is the author’s first novel and was short listed for the Man Booker Prize of 2013.

[kymmac · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautifully written, but oh so difficult to read. Brutal and stark, with a telling of America that American is not used to hearing. I wasn't big on the ending, but the writing was solid. Sounded absolutely like a memoir. True to being a teenager.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I picked this book up toward the end of 2013 or beginning of 2014 and didn't realize I had both a kindle and the audio addition. Then I realized that this would fit for the CAT challenge for December. Then I realized that it made a great companion read with Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee who has one section on the Novel in Africa which debates whether there really is a difference to novels from and by Africans. I enjoyed this story written by a young woman about the refugee experience and immigrant experience to America. Like others, I enjoyed the first part best. Even though Darling (the protagonist) is a refugee in Zimbabwe, she is happy. The second part, is set in America and captures the immigrant experience and the illegals experience in America and is not as happy. I liked the protagonist voice, I liked the readers rendition. The first part was a little hard to follow so having the whispersync was very handy. Once in America it was easier to understand. This book made the long list for the Booker.

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Unlike most works that involve political change in a country, Bulawayo sees the upheaval in Zimbabwe through the eyes of children. Yes, a lot has changed in their short lives, but children carry on, persevere, the past is an almost forgotten world and now they are living in a new one. There are no political stories in a child's world, no historical insight. This presents a poignant story where the reader must supply the background, a refreshing and thought-provoking exercise. In the second part of her novel, when Darling has moved to live with her aunt in the US, Bulawayo shows an empathy for the immense impact of alien surroundings following immigration, especially as it affects the young, who are again living in and trying to understand yet another world, even further removed from what they have known. It is recognized too that not all change is for the better, something that only those who have moved to a new country may understand. Bulawayo presents Darling's story with a flowing style that is at once uncomplicated yet without reservation.

[donnacallea · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought the first part, set in Zimbabwe, was wonderful. Darling, who tells her story in the first person, is a young African girl whose childhood is spent in her war-ravaged homeland, blighted by poverty, famine and violence. Yet her life is filled with games, adventures, and friends who leave an indelible, heart-wrenching, and vibrant mark on Darling as well as the reader. Then she manages to immigrate to America -- "destroyedmeechigan-- where her Aunt Fostina lives. And her story becomes the immigrant experience. Interesting, but not nearly as compelling as her life in Zimbabwe, with its NGOs, and stolen guavas, and children with names like Bastard .

[shemsu_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names is heart wrenching yet beautiful. Bulawayo describes hunger, poverty, cultural shock, and assimilation with extreme clarity that makes it both captivating and hard to read.We Need New Names is the story of a young girl, Darling, that lives in an impoverished African community. Darling and her crew are bored and hungry in a country struggling to find its footing. Most days the children go to the neighboring white community, Paradise, for adventure and guavas. The children walk pass the lavish homes of the white people, now mainly isolated and locked down, and struggle to imagine the world they live in.With incredible innocence, Darling attempts to understand the insanity surrounding her and her people. She tries to reconcile the raggedy life they have now to the normal life they had before.Darling eventually emigrates to “Destroyedmichiygen” and is greeted with the reality of America, instead of the fantasy. The very first thing she encounters is the cold and it makes her rethink the decision to leave her war torn country and move to Detroit. This portion of her life offers a little more comic relief than the first portion, but it is just as amazing.new-names-quote1As an outsider looking it, it is hard to understand all of the different levels of a situation, while Darling does not always understand them. It is depressing to listen to Darling talk about her 10 year-old, pregnant best friend, Chipo, with the same naive tone used to talk about playing a game. However, as she matures, it is also interesting the way this young woman learns about the world around her. She manages to shed some of her naivety and mold herself into a new person.We Need New Names is a great read. The subject matter is a little heavy, so it’s not exactly a relaxing read. However, it is an interesting story that is not usually heard. The stories that mainly come out of Africa are controlled by non-Africans. NoViolet Bulawayo is continuing the legacy of authors like Chinua Achebe, and telling the African story from the African perspective. It is both an important and entertaining read.

[thebookjunky · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The author of We Need New Names chose her own new name for her writing. ‘NoViolet’ is a tribute to Elizabeth Tshele’s mother Violet, who died when Elizabeth was only 18 months old.

She also chose interesting names for some of the characters in this book set in Zimbabwe. The story is a first person narrative by Darling, beginning at about age 10. Her close friends include Bastard, Chipo, Godknows. Her grandma is Mother of Bones. They live in Paradise; in the first chapter Hitting Budapest (which won the Caine African Short Story contest a couple of years ago), Darling and her friends are going to the rich area (village? neighbourhood?) of Budapest. They are looking for guavas to steal and eat (it reminded me as a kid sneaking into the nearby church yard with a couple of friends to steal crabapples from the trees. Somehow the tart fruits tasted better when the adrenaline was surging and the heart was palpitating with fear.) Their antics are brought up short by a white woman who calls to them from her house, and then comes outside to talk with them and take photos. The kids are uncomfortable — who is this person? The peculiar encounter is described with just the right level of unease, of a bit of a culture tangle. The shocking ending to that chapter sends a warning about what may come later.

Darling is written as a strong dynamic voice. She’s not a creation; she is there, existing, right there on the page, talking to you. She’s tough, she’s funny, she’s opinionated. Especially powerful are scenes where Darling and her friends meet up with Westerners, usually expats or from NGOs, and later in America. The familiar tv scene of the NGO truck arriving in some African village to dispense aid and goodies to throngs of shouting black kids is turned inside out, or flipped around, and it is funny as well as unsettling and thought provoking.
The novel is a collection of discrete events, almost linked short stories. Many of the chapters stand on their own. As the character gets a bit older, several short chapters become more introspective, and serve more as the role of chorus.
There’s a lot here — coming of age, colonialism, AIDS, immigration, assimilation — but somehow it knits wells together, and Darling’s voice always stays strong.
I hope to see this one on the Booker shortlist.

[jerhogan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A look at Africa and Zimbabwe which seems very accurate. An unflinching realistic look at childhood in Africa and as an immigrant in the States. Says things about Africa that I've never seen, Worthy of the Booker short list.

[sianpr · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A powerful in your face tale of refugees and migrants told through the eyes of a child. The first part of the book, set in Africa- seemingly Zimbabwe, works better than the 2nd part when the main protagonist, Darling, moves to the US. Some light and shade would help the audience of this story teller- perhaps the novelist found it difficult to distance herself sufficiently from real events

[w.mdo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I almost didn't finish this book, based on the first few chapters. The steam-of-consciousness narration in the voice of 10 year old Darling was littered with untranslated words and events were hard to follow. I'm glad I continued to read. I didn't have a very deep knowledge of Zimbabwe (I did a ton of googling as I read to fill in the blanks, and I especially recommend looking up Operation Murambatsvina if you are curious about how Darling and her friends and family ended up in their shantytown.) Some of the events in this book are things that no one should have to live through, especially a child. But seeing how Darling and her friends persevere (although I'm certain that's not the best word) is what really made this book click for me.I looked forward to Darling's move to the States, and the narration did get easier to follow as she aged, but her immigrant experience seemed so mundane and almost a let down, which I'm sure is part of the point. Everyone back home expects that her life is amazing, but it's not. It's not awful, she goes to school and always has enough to eat, but now she is an outsider in America, and an outsider from Zimbabwe. And that's crushing.I loved when Darling the teenager invokes games and songs and memories from her childhood, because even though it should have felt contrived it just didn't. There was a lightness to it, something comforting, and it somehow made all the sadness that this book contained bearable. A reminder that in this world joy and sadness are inextricably linked whether it pleases us or not.

[kirstie_innes7will · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First book of 2013 the very fresh voice of NoViolet Bulawayo who captures the exuberant if harsh life of children in an African refugee camp and their subsequent experience adjusting to the 'shattered Coke bottle' of America. Vivid, graphic, funny and tragic all at once. Loved it.

[mausergem_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a debut novel by Noviolet Bulawayo who is a Zimbabwean expatriate currently staying in the United States of America. The novel tells the story of Darling and her friends, a bunch of ten year olds, who roam the streets in Zimbabwe as their school teacher has left, and have nothing better to do than to play silly games and steal guavas from the richer neighborhood. Told in first person the author hints at the social and political injustices in her country.The second part of this novel is from the point of view of Darling as an immigrant in America. It's a touching narrative of the difficulties of setting in and the feeling of inescapably. This book was nominated for the Booker's prize in 2013. It's extraordinary in parts and overall good. A 4/5 read.

[sanddune_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Darling and her friends Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho and Stina roam the streets of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, getting handouts from the NGO lorry and searching for ripe guava in the gardens of more prosperous suburbs. The shanty town that they come from, Paradise, does not have gardens of fresh fruit: it has tin-roofed one-roomed shacks with no running water or sanitation. There are no schools any more as the teachers have not been paid and have fled to more prosperous countries: any one who can leaves to find a country where it is easier to stay alive. Even the children play the country game as they dream of where they will live:But first we have to fight over names because everyone wants to be certain countries, like everybody wants to be the U.S.A. and Britain and Canada and Australia and Switzerland and France and Italy and Sweden and Russia and Greece and them. These are the country-countries. If you lose the fight, then you just have to settle for countries like Dubai and South Africa and Botswana and Tanzania and them. These are not country-countries but at least life is better than here. Nobody wants to be rags of countries like Congo, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan, like Haiti, like Sri Lanka, and not even this one we live in -- who wants to be in a terrible place of hunger and things falling apart.'Gradually it becomes apparent that the children have not always lived like this: they once had proper brick houses with bathrooms and TVs and proper furniture; some them had parents who had been to university; they had bicycles to play with outside. And then the government bulldozers had come and bulldozed their houses and everything in them, and the children were left with Paradise...The first half of this book is definitely the strongest, when the imperfect understanding of the children brings to life the horror of the day to day existence. But as Darling's dream comes true and her Aunt Fostalina takes her to the United States to live the book seems to lose something of its focus. Throughout the book has a slightly loose structure, but this seems to loosen further once Darling is in U.S. so that it becomes a series of rather disjointed episodes. And while overall it has some interesting things to say about the differences between the reality of life in a new country and the expectations of those who remind behind in the old, it seemed to do so on a quite superficial level. Overall, while an interesting read, I'm a bit surprised it made the Booker shortlist.

[pinkcrayon99 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Darling along with her family and friends live in an area of Zimbabwe called Paradise. The name is more of a cruel metaphor than their reality. Darling and her friends biggest battle is hunger. Their excursions in search of food always end up being grand adventures. Darling is ten. Her friends aren't much older. There is no school for them to attend in Paradise. Bulawayo throws a wide net in We Need New Names . There is a country hoping for change. Families affected by AIDS and poverty. Paradise has an influx of "goodwill" that only generates more hopelessness. The Chinese are present like in most of Africa. Of course, the juxtaposition of escaping life in Africa to live in the United States looms large. Darling leaves Paradise only to find out the streets aren't paved with gold in the United States. The characters are named like those from a Toni Morrison novel: Bastard, GodKnows, Messenger, Prophet Revelations...etc. These characters possessed a certain innocence that kept me reading but it also felt like the author was trying too hard and never made a point of anything. I'm still lost. The ending was so vague until it was pointless. There was no heartbeat, just names.

[apurdie-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. Somehow I've read a lot of books about the white experience in Zimbabwe, and it was really interesting to read about the flip side. I especially enjoyed Darling's take on American culture as a teenage immigrant. The tone and prose is reminiscent of a Junot Diaz novel.

[thewasp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Following political upheaval, 10 year old, "Darling's" secure life in Zimbabwe falls apart and home becomes a shanty town and hunger and uncertainty become a way of life. Her small group of friends escape their harsh realities through play.Darling eventually is sent to America to live with her Aunt and although she now has food and a "good" life she will always long for the smells, tastes and customs of her own country.A book full of emotion

[bellettres · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The first half of this story was very absorbing. It began to drag once Darling got to America.