We Need New Names

The word “visceral” comes to mind when I attempt to distill what this book is about. A not-so-fictional auto-biography opens in the slum called Paradise, where Chipo, Bastard, Sbho, Stina, and “I” are headed to the–relatively–more affluent area of Budapest to steal fruit. These dirt-poor kids don’t know it, but they are victims of the far-off, murderous regime of President Robert Mugabe–but that always remains hidden in the background. They are brutalized and never know it or know why.

Courtesy of an invite from an Aunt in the United States, the protagonist eventually escapes Zimbabwe. But once there, while things… show more.

Having lived in poverty and forced to grow up fast due to the hardship of life, what makes this book tragic is that when Darling the child protagonist arrives in the US, the land she dreamed of, she misses ‘home’ and her dreams don’t come true. Recommended for the author's narrative verve and its general overview of Zimbabwe through the lens of the less privileged. The lesson for me was that material comfort does not guarantee happiness. 

Social justice activism wherever you are requires a sense of humour. So meet Darling (the narrator), GodKnows, Bastard, Forgiveness, Chipo, and the rest of the nearly-feral gang of pre-teens in Paradise. Their banter, misadventures, and naïve but hard-headed observations of life in an informal settlement in Zimbabwe as the country implodes into cruelty and desperation comprise the first half of this wry, often disturbing but wrily witty novel. In the second half, Darling joins her aunt in “DestroyedMichygan” and learns to navigate the perils of mindless consumerism, African-American teenhood, and the mysteries of the American so-called dream.