Identity, Place, and Home in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names
Abstract
This essay explores the relationship between the individual and society, and the role external social forces such place, community, and language play in individual identity formation. In NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names, the child narrator, Darling, is forced to flee her native Zimbabwe amid political turmoil, and finds herself now growing up and searching for identity in Detroit Michigan, USA. Despite her repeated attempts to "Americanise" and fit in, Darling finds herself in a state of perpetually ambiguous identity: no longer Zimbabwean, and never quite American, she finds her new American life shallow and meaningless.
Introduction
There is no individual whose will is so strong as to render them capable of fashioning their own identity independent of all external forces. Rather, a “person is a person because of other people” (Bulawayo 292, Acknowledgements), and an individual’s identity is more a complex, experiential chimaera of people, cultures, communities and places from that individual’s past. In NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names, the protagonist and narrator, Darling, spends her childhood immersed in a small and poor, yet happy, Zimbabwean community, and her identity becomes a manifestation of that community’s culture. Forced to flee that culture to an idealised America during a dangerous period of civil unrest under the Mugabe regime, Darling attempts to reposition her identity as an idealised ‘American.’ She soon finds that an impossible feat, however, and despite her repeated attempts at transformation, fails to to replace her Zimbabwean cultural identity with an American one. Instead, she finds herself in a perpetual limbo state of ambiguous identity: neither American nor Zimbabwean, she speaks neither English nor her native language, has a permanent home in neither Zimbabwe nor America, and appears to live a shallow and meaningless, almost Kafkaesque existence. Darling turns her back on her family, her friends, her country and her past, and in doing so, she erodes a large part of her identity, which, in turn, erodes a large part of Zimbabwe and Africa’s identity.
Names and Identity
In Darling’s cultural context of rural Zimbabwe, naming plays an important role in defining both people and places, and a name often describes that person, sometimes ironically and paradoxically. Darling’s village, ironically named ‘Paradise,’ would usually bring connotations of peace, tranquility and perhaps religious allusion to heaven, but in this novel it is nothing but an overcrowded and miserable slum of “tin, with cardboard, with plastic, with nails and other things with which to build” (76). Juxtaposed with Paradise, the rich neighbourhood Budapest, which etymologically means “oven” or “furnace” (Online Etymology Dictionary), is replete with an almost Edenesque supply of guava for Darling and her friends to eat (Bulawayo 12). Ironically, Budapest actually more deserving of the name ‘Paradise’ as it is a place of “really nice house[s]” with “big windows and sparkling things all over, and a red swimming pool at front… everything looks really pretty” (Bulawayo 12). Naming peculiarities extend even to human characters: Darling’s friend, who is objectified as ‘Bastard,’ seems to be not only born of unmarried parents but actually parentless, while his little and also objectified sister ‘Fraction’ seems to have an accurate moniker as one of the smallest characters. The character the reader is given the littlest information about is named ‘Godknows,’ while the character given the name ‘Mother of Bones’ performs more of a motherhood and educative role than Darling’s actual mother or even her aunt. The revered local pastor, ‘Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro’ contains the pejorative ‘bitch’ in it, and of all the names is perhaps the least suited to a priest. Other characters such as ‘Freedom’ and ‘Bornfree’ are sad and paradoxical misnomers to their abject and poverty-stricken reality. Later in the novel, having escaped to America, Darling (249) laments that:
...our own children were born. We held their American birth certificates tight. We did not name our children after our parents, after ourselves; we feared if we did they would not be able to say their own names, that their friends and teachers would not know how to call them. We gave them names that would make them belong in America, names that did not mean anything to us: Aaron, Josh, Dana, Corey, Jack, Kathleen.
By giving her characters and settings confusing or even paradoxical names, Bulawayo seems to be suggesting that while humans are often hopefully named descriptively by their parents in attempt to project them on a desired destiny, the practice is futile because society plays a far greater role in shaping the individual than the triviality of an appellation. Bulawayo suggests, if anything, that an individual’s character may be a reversal of their name.
When Darling begins working in America, her immigrant colleagues are called not by their birth names, but objectified by their country of origin, conferring more ambiguity on their identity. Darling’s colleagues originally had “names like myths, names like puzzles, names we had never heard before: Virgilio, Balumugunthan, Faheem, Abdulrahman, Aziz, Baako, Dae-Hyun, Ousmane, Kimatsu” (Bulawayo 245). The names were handed down to these individuals by their parents, confer characterisation upon them, and help to form a large part of their identity. For example, the name Virgilio means “from the Latin, meaning strong, flourishing” (Kolatch 273); while Aziz means “strong” (28); and Adbulrahman comes from the Islamic name Abdul, meaning “servant of Allah” (4). In America, however, these immigrants are no longer known by these names; instead, they are objectified and dehumanised by being referred to as whatever country they originated from: “So, how on earth do you do this, Sri Lanka? Mexico, are you coming or what?Is it really true you sold a kidney to come to America, India?... We know you despise this job, Sudan, but deal with it man. Come, Ethiopia, move, move, move; Israel, Kazakhstan, Niger, brothers, let’s go!” (Bulawayo 245, my emphases). Ironically, however, by naming these individuals as their homelands, they are actually having the effect of eroding their native identity, and they cease to practice many of their cultural customs from the native lands they are named after:
...like us, they had left their homelands behind… When our children became young adults they did not ask for our approval to marry. We did not get bride prices, we did not get gifts. At their weddings we did not spill beer and tobacco on the earth, did not beat drums to thank our ancestors… When we die, our children will not know how to wail, how to mourn us the right way. They will not go mad with grief, they will not pin black cloth on their arms, they will not spill beer and tobacco on the earth, they will not sing till their voices are hoarse. They will not put our plates and cups on our graves; they will not send us away with mphafa trees. (245-252)
Darlings colleagues’ identity now lies in an ambiguous and dehumanised middle ground between American and their native country, and despite being referred to by their home country, this ironically has the effect of objectifying their identity and removing them farther from it.
...our own children were born. We held their American birth certificates tight. We did not name our children after our parents, after ourselves; we feared if we did they would not be able to say their own names, that their friends and teachers would not know how to call them. We gave them names that would make them belong in America, names that did not mean anything to us: Aaron, Josh, Dana, Corey, Jack, Kathleen.
By giving her characters and settings confusing or even paradoxical names, Bulawayo seems to be suggesting that while humans are often hopefully named descriptively by their parents in attempt to project them on a desired destiny, the practice is futile because society plays a far greater role in shaping the individual than the triviality of an appellation. Bulawayo suggests, if anything, that an individual’s character may be a reversal of their name.
When Darling begins working in America, her immigrant colleagues are called not by their birth names, but objectified by their country of origin, conferring more ambiguity on their identity. Darling’s colleagues originally had “names like myths, names like puzzles, names we had never heard before: Virgilio, Balumugunthan, Faheem, Abdulrahman, Aziz, Baako, Dae-Hyun, Ousmane, Kimatsu” (Bulawayo 245). The names were handed down to these individuals by their parents, confer characterisation upon them, and help to form a large part of their identity. For example, the name Virgilio means “from the Latin, meaning strong, flourishing” (Kolatch 273); while Aziz means “strong” (28); and Adbulrahman comes from the Islamic name Abdul, meaning “servant of Allah” (4). In America, however, these immigrants are no longer known by these names; instead, they are objectified and dehumanised by being referred to as whatever country they originated from: “So, how on earth do you do this, Sri Lanka? Mexico, are you coming or what?Is it really true you sold a kidney to come to America, India?... We know you despise this job, Sudan, but deal with it man. Come, Ethiopia, move, move, move; Israel, Kazakhstan, Niger, brothers, let’s go!” (Bulawayo 245, my emphases). Ironically, however, by naming these individuals as their homelands, they are actually having the effect of eroding their native identity, and they cease to practice many of their cultural customs from the native lands they are named after:
...like us, they had left their homelands behind… When our children became young adults they did not ask for our approval to marry. We did not get bride prices, we did not get gifts. At their weddings we did not spill beer and tobacco on the earth, did not beat drums to thank our ancestors… When we die, our children will not know how to wail, how to mourn us the right way. They will not go mad with grief, they will not pin black cloth on their arms, they will not spill beer and tobacco on the earth, they will not sing till their voices are hoarse. They will not put our plates and cups on our graves; they will not send us away with mphafa trees. (245-252)
Darlings colleagues’ identity now lies in an ambiguous and dehumanised middle ground between American and their native country, and despite being referred to by their home country, this ironically has the effect of objectifying their identity and removing them farther from it.
Language, Identity, & Social Class
In the novel and as in real life, language is a shared knowledge system which plays a role in perpetuating culture, shaping cultural identities and even determining social social class. In the community of Paradise, English is revered as a powerful language, and the ability to speak it is a key to ascending in social rank. Despite being her junior, Darling looks down upon Mother of Bones when singing a hymn at church “because she doesn’t know all the English words because [sic] she doesn’t speak the right English because [sic] she didn’t go to school” (Bulawayo 32, my emphases), yet ironically, Darling’s English is frequently littered with such run-on sentences and repeated conjunctions. The local priest, Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro, apparently uneducated, possesses a large name of four large words, and is the longest name in the story. Strangely and ironically, however, he must avoid long words due to a fear of “running into a word he won’t know how to pronounce” (37), and keeps his language simple for his religious followers. Even apparently educated local and Chinese workers speaking multilingually are made fun of for lack of proficiency in English: “around the construction site the men speak in shouts. It’s like listening to nonsense, to people praying in tongues; it’s Chinese, it’s our languages, it’s English mixed with things, it’s the machine noise” (45). Darling and her friends further taunt the Chinese foreigners: “the fat man starts ching-chonging to us like he thinks he is in his grandmother’s backyard. He ching-chongs ching-chongs and then he stops” (47, my epmhases). On their final trip to Budapest during the uprising, Darling’s crew encounter a Zimbabwean security guard who seemingly attempts to heighten his social capital by speaking in long, convoluted and tautologous sentences using unnecessarily complex vocabulary for the contextual register: “I command you to immediately turn around and retrace your steps. Extricate yourselves from these premises and retreat to whatever hole you crawled out of. Under no circumstances should I ever lay my eyes on you again, you follow” (107). Despite the colonial history in Zimbabwe, English proficiency is still considered a key to transcending class structures and therefore a key marker of individual identity.
When Darling leaves Zimbabwe for America, she descends sharply from being considered at least semi-proficient English speaker to lowly English learner, and this affects both her identity and social capital in her new home. She laments that:
the problem with English is… you usually can’t open your mouth and it comes out just like that - first you have to think what to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right (Bulawayo 195)
Unable to join the fluent-English middle social class, she forms her own socio-lingual subgroup with her two other African expatriate friends, Marina and Kristal, and they engage in their own 21st century technological lingua franca, with elements borrowed from their new American culture:
Wt u doin?
nuthin. trynna study stupid bio…
lol, y is it stupid? I kinda lykit…
thts coz u wanna be a doc. nt feelin it…
wl u know my dad wants me to. n-e-ways wt u gonn do?
(277)
Being moderately proficient, Darling and her Aunt Fostalina generally converse with each other in English. When a part of a conversation becomes extremely important, however, and a speaker wants to ensure that their language contains no errors and they are completely understood, he or she drops English and their original language is used:
Darling, leave me alone, do I look like the immigration to you? She says. She is speaking in our language now, which means the conversation is over. When Aunt Fostalina switches languages like that, you know whatever was being talked about is finished” (191)
This is significant because in private conversation, Darling and Fostalina have their original language as a crutch to fall back on when the conversation becomes too important or difficult for the limitations of their English proficiency. Outside in the real world, however, this crutch is removed and they must persevere with the limited English they have, which would inevitably lead to many of their thoughts and opinions never being expressed or heard, further eroding their identity. Without the ability to speak their native tongue freely and frequently, and not completely proficient at expressing themselves in English, they lose a large part of their identity.
Language plays perhaps the most important role in shaping an individual’s identity, and Darling sets about ‘Americanising’ her language through watching iconic American movies and TV programs, and surfing the internet. When narrating how her English pronunciation is frequently misunderstood, she decides that must learn to:
sound American, and the TV has taught me just how to do it. It’s pretty easy; all you have to do is watch Dora the Explorer, The Simpsons, Spongebob, Scooby -Doo, and then you move on to That’s so Raven, Glee, Friends, Golden Girls, and so on, just listening and imitating the accents. If you do it well, then before you know it, nobody will ask you to repeat what you said” (195-6, original emphasis)
These iconic American sitcoms and reality tv shows symbolise Darling’s desire to be accepted as an American by her peers. Effectively, this process will inevitably preclude Darling from ever having to use her native language, eroding perhaps the most significant part of her cultural identity, leaving what is left prone to shaping by Hollywood corporatism and media moguls. Darling does not stop at mere pronunciation however: she goes about reconfiguring her entire lexicon with words that make her sound more American and less Zimbwean: “pretty good, pain in the ass, for real, awesome, totally, skinny, dude, freaking, bizarre, psyched, messed up, like, tripping, motherfucker, clearance, allowance, douche bag, you’re welcome, acting up, yikes” (196, original emphasis). In what is likely an attempt to gain peer acceptance amongst the opposite gender, she also becomes fluent in the internet porn lexicon:
so far, we’ve seen amateur; we’ve seen anal, which was plain disgusting; we’ve seen Asian, which was respectful; we’ve seen big tits and blond and blow job; we’ve seen bondage, which was creepy; we’ve seen creampie and cumshot, which were both nasty, we’ve seen double penetration, which was scary; we’ve seen ebony, which made us embarrassed; we’ve seen facials, which was dirty; we’ve seen fetish, which was strange, we’ve seen gangbang, which was like a crime… we’ve seen group, which was nasty; we’ve seen hentai, which was exciting; we’ve seen Japanese, which was quiet; and we’ve seen lesbian, which was interesting (201-2, my emphases).
Darling sees that language plays a crucial role in shaping an individual’s identity, therefore she goes about reconfiguring hers through her language and lexical resource in order to be more ‘American.’
When Darling leaves Zimbabwe for America, she descends sharply from being considered at least semi-proficient English speaker to lowly English learner, and this affects both her identity and social capital in her new home. She laments that:
the problem with English is… you usually can’t open your mouth and it comes out just like that - first you have to think what to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right (Bulawayo 195)
Unable to join the fluent-English middle social class, she forms her own socio-lingual subgroup with her two other African expatriate friends, Marina and Kristal, and they engage in their own 21st century technological lingua franca, with elements borrowed from their new American culture:
Wt u doin?
nuthin. trynna study stupid bio…
lol, y is it stupid? I kinda lykit…
thts coz u wanna be a doc. nt feelin it…
wl u know my dad wants me to. n-e-ways wt u gonn do?
(277)
Being moderately proficient, Darling and her Aunt Fostalina generally converse with each other in English. When a part of a conversation becomes extremely important, however, and a speaker wants to ensure that their language contains no errors and they are completely understood, he or she drops English and their original language is used:
Darling, leave me alone, do I look like the immigration to you? She says. She is speaking in our language now, which means the conversation is over. When Aunt Fostalina switches languages like that, you know whatever was being talked about is finished” (191)
This is significant because in private conversation, Darling and Fostalina have their original language as a crutch to fall back on when the conversation becomes too important or difficult for the limitations of their English proficiency. Outside in the real world, however, this crutch is removed and they must persevere with the limited English they have, which would inevitably lead to many of their thoughts and opinions never being expressed or heard, further eroding their identity. Without the ability to speak their native tongue freely and frequently, and not completely proficient at expressing themselves in English, they lose a large part of their identity.
Language plays perhaps the most important role in shaping an individual’s identity, and Darling sets about ‘Americanising’ her language through watching iconic American movies and TV programs, and surfing the internet. When narrating how her English pronunciation is frequently misunderstood, she decides that must learn to:
sound American, and the TV has taught me just how to do it. It’s pretty easy; all you have to do is watch Dora the Explorer, The Simpsons, Spongebob, Scooby -Doo, and then you move on to That’s so Raven, Glee, Friends, Golden Girls, and so on, just listening and imitating the accents. If you do it well, then before you know it, nobody will ask you to repeat what you said” (195-6, original emphasis)
These iconic American sitcoms and reality tv shows symbolise Darling’s desire to be accepted as an American by her peers. Effectively, this process will inevitably preclude Darling from ever having to use her native language, eroding perhaps the most significant part of her cultural identity, leaving what is left prone to shaping by Hollywood corporatism and media moguls. Darling does not stop at mere pronunciation however: she goes about reconfiguring her entire lexicon with words that make her sound more American and less Zimbwean: “pretty good, pain in the ass, for real, awesome, totally, skinny, dude, freaking, bizarre, psyched, messed up, like, tripping, motherfucker, clearance, allowance, douche bag, you’re welcome, acting up, yikes” (196, original emphasis). In what is likely an attempt to gain peer acceptance amongst the opposite gender, she also becomes fluent in the internet porn lexicon:
so far, we’ve seen amateur; we’ve seen anal, which was plain disgusting; we’ve seen Asian, which was respectful; we’ve seen big tits and blond and blow job; we’ve seen bondage, which was creepy; we’ve seen creampie and cumshot, which were both nasty, we’ve seen double penetration, which was scary; we’ve seen ebony, which made us embarrassed; we’ve seen facials, which was dirty; we’ve seen fetish, which was strange, we’ve seen gangbang, which was like a crime… we’ve seen group, which was nasty; we’ve seen hentai, which was exciting; we’ve seen Japanese, which was quiet; and we’ve seen lesbian, which was interesting (201-2, my emphases).
Darling sees that language plays a crucial role in shaping an individual’s identity, therefore she goes about reconfiguring hers through her language and lexical resource in order to be more ‘American.’
The Symbolism of "The West"
Bulawayo uses a range of literary symbols to depict Darling’s erosion of Zimbabwean identity, most notably the guavas and the all-blanketing Michigan snow. Darling’s childhood in Paradise revolved around sneaking into Budapest to steal guavas, which “taste so good [she] cannot even explain it” (Bulawayo12). According to Chitando (4), Darling and her friends raiding the guavas in Budapest is a “massive political statement” in that by stealing them, the poor “will not continue to marvel at the extravagance of the rich.” In Darling’s childhood, the guavas symbolise her desire to leave paradise and become rich when she grows up. Darling continues this political statement by moving to America, where she attempts to leave her poor identity and experience this extravagance. Once in America, she sees that wealth and extravagance are superficial, and the guavas take on a duality of meaning, now symbolising her African childhood. When Darling was poor, she craved guavas from a rich place; when she becomes rich, she still craves guavas, but now from a poor place. Unable to return to her home, she cannot obtain guavas in America, and thus appears to lose a large part of her childhood identity, which only returns when she gets a guava and, like a child again, begins to giggle (187). She opens the guavas and notes the “delicious and dizzying” smell and is taken back to her homeland: “I closed my eyes and inhaled like I hadn’t breathed in ages. While eating it, she imagines she leaves America and returns home to Zimbabwe: “each time I take a bite, I leave the house, Kalamazoo and Michigan, leave the country altogether and find myself back in Paradise” (187-8). If guavas are a symbol for Darling’s childhood in Zimbabwe and her happy past, then its counterpart is the snow that symbolises her bleak and identityless present and future in America:
If I were at home I know I would not be standing around because something called snow was preventing me from going outside to live life. Maybe me and Shbo and Bastard and Chipo and Godknows and Stine would be out in Budapest, stealing guavas. Or we would be playing… But then we wouldn’t be having enough food, which is why I will stand being in America dealing with the snow; there is food to eat here, all types of food. There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that (154-5, my emphases)
Like the winter snow removes all trace of summer and spring, the snow ‘whitens’ Darling’s identity, and precludes the growing of guavas, having an ‘Americanising’ effect.
Darling’s attempted identity shift from Zimbabwean to American is further amplified by her clinging to and even consuming symbols of America and ‘the West,’ albeit unsuccessfully. When out driving across town with her friends, she notes
The churches and liquor store on the right, the Chinese hair store on the left, the car garage; pass the Shell gas station on the left and the Speedway one on the right, pass the tattoo place, the bank, the Holiday Inn, the Starbucks, the fancy private high school… the Chinese restaurant and the Indian restaurant and the Walgreens and the McDonald’s and the Burger King (219, my emphases)
Instead of having no food to eat other than fresh guavas, Darling now engages in American excess, hungrily gorging on food from American fast food giants: “At McDonald’s we devoured Big Macs and wolfed down fries and guzzled supersized cokes. At Burger King we worshipped Whoppers. At KFC we mauled bucket chicken. We went to Chinese buffets and ate all we could inhale - fried rice, chicken, beef, shrimp” (219, my emphases). Considering the depth Darling went into regarding how much she loved eating guavas, eating American food seems to be a totally unenjoyable experience, where food is not eaten or enjoyably dined on, but instead ‘inhaled’ like tasteless air. Despite having almost everything she could possibly need, including food, Darling seems to be willing to trade it all to revert to previous identity: “...I’ve never left, and I’m ten again and we are playing country-game and Find bin Laden and Andy-over. We’re teasing Godknows for his peeking buttocks, we’re watching a fight, we’re imitating the church people, we’re watching somebody get buried. We’re hungry but we’re hungry together and we’re at home and everything is sweeter than dessert” (207). Despite Darling’s attempts to overwrite her Zimbabwean identity with an American one, she is unable to do so, as it forms far too much of her persona: “you just cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same” (148).
In We Need New Names, it is not only people who lose their identity: countries and entire continents do also. Darling describes the complex and confusing identity of Zimbabwe, itself renamed from Rhodesia, resulting from its colonial history and ongoing political turmoil:
There are three homes inside Mother and Aunt Fostalina’s heads: home before independence, before I was born, when black and white people were fighting over the country. Home after independence, when black people won the country. And then the home of things falling apart, which made Aunt Fostalina leave and come here… 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 there was war; home when black people got our stolen country back after independence; and then the home of now. Home one, home two, home three, home four. (Bulawayo 192-3)
Due its history of revolution and turmoil the national identity of Zimbabwe is entirely dependant upon the subject, and the time period in which they were born. The entire continent of Africa is also given complex and confusing identity markers. When Darling tells Americans she is from Africa, all they can say about the continent is apparently what they’ve learned about its problems from American mainstream media and television:
Africa? Is that where vultures wait for famished children to die? ...where the life expectancy is thirty-five years? ...where dissidents shove AK-47s between women’s legs? ...where people run about naked? ...where they massacred each other? ...where the old president rigged the election and people were tortured and killed and a whole bunch of them put in prison and all, there where they are dying of cholera… yes we’ve seen your country; it’s been on the news. (239)
With these perceptions, the African identity is relegated to a chaotic, dysfunctional, precolonial and almost “savage” place still in need of Western enlightenment, to use Conradian terms. Interestingly, a Conradian allusion appears late in the novel when Darling finds the Ivory map of Africa: “it’s an ivory slab the shape of the African map, and right in the center of it is carved an eye… when I saw the slab at Eliot’s… it felt like the eye was looking at me so the right thing to do was to steal the ivory map” (285-6). Several complex metaphors are at play here: during the scramble for Africa and subsequent colonial period, the ‘West,’ being white people, invaded and colonised African land under the pretext of ‘enlightening’ a dark place, however it is often argued that the ulterior motive for the scramble was the violent and forceful extraction of resources, most notably, the valuable white ivory. In his novella Heart of Darkness, Joseph conrad uses a similar metaphor with an African map:
Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps… At the time there were many blank spaces on earth… but there was one yet - the biggest, the most blank, so to speak - that I had a hankering after. True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery - a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. (Conrad 8, my emphases)
Despite the so-called ‘enlightenment’ occurring as Africa becomes more ‘discovered,’ the map actually becomes darker, symbolising Africa’s descent into a ‘place of darkness’ as its people are enslaved and resources stolen. When Darling found her ivory map, she stole it, just as the colonisers did to Africa’s ivory during the colonial era. The violent pillage of Africa for ivory and its subsequent period of colonaliasm removed the existing African cultural identity, turning it into a place of darkness under the ironic guise of enlightenment. In We Need New Names, Darling herself has turned her back on her own African identity by moving to America and Americanising herself, and her stealing of the ivory map is a symbolic metaphor for her part in the erosion of her continent’s identity.
If I were at home I know I would not be standing around because something called snow was preventing me from going outside to live life. Maybe me and Shbo and Bastard and Chipo and Godknows and Stine would be out in Budapest, stealing guavas. Or we would be playing… But then we wouldn’t be having enough food, which is why I will stand being in America dealing with the snow; there is food to eat here, all types of food. There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that (154-5, my emphases)
Like the winter snow removes all trace of summer and spring, the snow ‘whitens’ Darling’s identity, and precludes the growing of guavas, having an ‘Americanising’ effect.
Darling’s attempted identity shift from Zimbabwean to American is further amplified by her clinging to and even consuming symbols of America and ‘the West,’ albeit unsuccessfully. When out driving across town with her friends, she notes
The churches and liquor store on the right, the Chinese hair store on the left, the car garage; pass the Shell gas station on the left and the Speedway one on the right, pass the tattoo place, the bank, the Holiday Inn, the Starbucks, the fancy private high school… the Chinese restaurant and the Indian restaurant and the Walgreens and the McDonald’s and the Burger King (219, my emphases)
Instead of having no food to eat other than fresh guavas, Darling now engages in American excess, hungrily gorging on food from American fast food giants: “At McDonald’s we devoured Big Macs and wolfed down fries and guzzled supersized cokes. At Burger King we worshipped Whoppers. At KFC we mauled bucket chicken. We went to Chinese buffets and ate all we could inhale - fried rice, chicken, beef, shrimp” (219, my emphases). Considering the depth Darling went into regarding how much she loved eating guavas, eating American food seems to be a totally unenjoyable experience, where food is not eaten or enjoyably dined on, but instead ‘inhaled’ like tasteless air. Despite having almost everything she could possibly need, including food, Darling seems to be willing to trade it all to revert to previous identity: “...I’ve never left, and I’m ten again and we are playing country-game and Find bin Laden and Andy-over. We’re teasing Godknows for his peeking buttocks, we’re watching a fight, we’re imitating the church people, we’re watching somebody get buried. We’re hungry but we’re hungry together and we’re at home and everything is sweeter than dessert” (207). Despite Darling’s attempts to overwrite her Zimbabwean identity with an American one, she is unable to do so, as it forms far too much of her persona: “you just cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same” (148).
In We Need New Names, it is not only people who lose their identity: countries and entire continents do also. Darling describes the complex and confusing identity of Zimbabwe, itself renamed from Rhodesia, resulting from its colonial history and ongoing political turmoil:
There are three homes inside Mother and Aunt Fostalina’s heads: home before independence, before I was born, when black and white people were fighting over the country. Home after independence, when black people won the country. And then the home of things falling apart, which made Aunt Fostalina leave and come here… 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 there was war; home when black people got our stolen country back after independence; and then the home of now. Home one, home two, home three, home four. (Bulawayo 192-3)
Due its history of revolution and turmoil the national identity of Zimbabwe is entirely dependant upon the subject, and the time period in which they were born. The entire continent of Africa is also given complex and confusing identity markers. When Darling tells Americans she is from Africa, all they can say about the continent is apparently what they’ve learned about its problems from American mainstream media and television:
Africa? Is that where vultures wait for famished children to die? ...where the life expectancy is thirty-five years? ...where dissidents shove AK-47s between women’s legs? ...where people run about naked? ...where they massacred each other? ...where the old president rigged the election and people were tortured and killed and a whole bunch of them put in prison and all, there where they are dying of cholera… yes we’ve seen your country; it’s been on the news. (239)
With these perceptions, the African identity is relegated to a chaotic, dysfunctional, precolonial and almost “savage” place still in need of Western enlightenment, to use Conradian terms. Interestingly, a Conradian allusion appears late in the novel when Darling finds the Ivory map of Africa: “it’s an ivory slab the shape of the African map, and right in the center of it is carved an eye… when I saw the slab at Eliot’s… it felt like the eye was looking at me so the right thing to do was to steal the ivory map” (285-6). Several complex metaphors are at play here: during the scramble for Africa and subsequent colonial period, the ‘West,’ being white people, invaded and colonised African land under the pretext of ‘enlightening’ a dark place, however it is often argued that the ulterior motive for the scramble was the violent and forceful extraction of resources, most notably, the valuable white ivory. In his novella Heart of Darkness, Joseph conrad uses a similar metaphor with an African map:
Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps… At the time there were many blank spaces on earth… but there was one yet - the biggest, the most blank, so to speak - that I had a hankering after. True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery - a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. (Conrad 8, my emphases)
Despite the so-called ‘enlightenment’ occurring as Africa becomes more ‘discovered,’ the map actually becomes darker, symbolising Africa’s descent into a ‘place of darkness’ as its people are enslaved and resources stolen. When Darling found her ivory map, she stole it, just as the colonisers did to Africa’s ivory during the colonial era. The violent pillage of Africa for ivory and its subsequent period of colonaliasm removed the existing African cultural identity, turning it into a place of darkness under the ironic guise of enlightenment. In We Need New Names, Darling herself has turned her back on her own African identity by moving to America and Americanising herself, and her stealing of the ivory map is a symbolic metaphor for her part in the erosion of her continent’s identity.
Conclusion
In summing up, an individual is an individual not because of their internal will: identity is mostly a product of that individual’s culture and community. In We Need New Names, the protagonist Darling’s childhood identity is inextricably bound up in her Zimbabwean culture, and her community in Paradise. When she is forced to leave the country due to political turmoil, she attempts to reconfigure her Zimbabwean identity into and American one, however she soon finds herself in a perpetual state of identity limbo: not really Zimbabwean, and never truly American, she finds her existence shallow and meaningless. Moreover, by leaving behind her African identity, she has also played a role in eroding both Africa and Zimbabwe’s identity and reputation worldwide.
Works Cited
Bulawayo, NoViolet. We Need New Names. London: Vintage, 2014. Print.
Chitando, Anna. "The Girl Child's Resilience and Agency in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names." Journal of Literary Studies 32.1 (2016): 114-26. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness: Joseph Conrad. New York, NY: Spark, 2014. Print.
Kolatch, Alfred J. Dictionary of First Names. New York: Perigee, 2002. Print.
Chitando, Anna. "The Girl Child's Resilience and Agency in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names." Journal of Literary Studies 32.1 (2016): 114-26. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness: Joseph Conrad. New York, NY: Spark, 2014. Print.
Kolatch, Alfred J. Dictionary of First Names. New York: Perigee, 2002. Print.
