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Sto caricando le informazioni... We Need New Names: A Novel (edizione 2013)di NoViolet Bulawayo (Autore)
Informazioni sull'operaWe Need New Names di NoViolet Bulawayo
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This book provides an incredibly interesting perspective of a young girl immigrating to the US from Zimbabwe. I was struck by how the story jumps in time, skipping months or years to get to the next event. It reminded me a bit of "The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros in that regard. Watching Darling grow up and see how her time in the US changes her from who she was in Zimbabwe is very poignant. There is a lot to think about with this book, and I feel it would make a good book club book. NoViolet Bulawayo's first novel made the 2013 Booker shortlist, which gives an insight into her talent. We Need New Names is the story of Darling, a young child living in poverty in a Zimbabwean shanty town. Darling and her friends run riot amid the squalor, and their games innocently reflect the horror going on around them. Darling eventually escapes this environment and moves to the USA, where she struggles to get to grips with her new life. She feels the strings attaching her to her old country, but knows she can never go back. The first half of the book is both amusing and shocking as Darling describes the games she plays with her friends. However, the second half is a more mundane account of a young immigrant in a new country. That said, there is one chapter called How They Lived which is as good an account of the experiences of a third world migrant to the new world as I've ever read. Gems like this chapter make We Need New Names a very worthwhile addition to African literature.
Darling is 10 when we first meet her, and the voice Ms. Bulawayo has fashioned for her is utterly distinctive — by turns unsparing and lyrical, unsentimental and poetic, spiky and meditative. It is the voice, early on, of a child — observant, skeptical and hardhearted in the way children can be. Bulawayo's keen powers of observation and social commentary, and her refreshing sense of humour, come through best in moments when she seems to have forgotten her checklist and goes unscripted: where, for example, we find Darling and her friends Krystal, the African American, and Marina, the Nigerian, watching porn in the basement, and they turn off the volume so they can make all the groaning and moaning noises themselves. Or when, on describing snow falling outside the window, she writes: "How does something so big it shrouds everything come down just like that and you don't even hear it coming?" Premi e riconoscimentiMenzioniElenchi di rilievo
Fiction.
African American Fiction.
Literature.
Darling is only ten years old, and yet she must navigate a fragile and violent world. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends steal guavas, try to get the baby out of young Chipo's belly, and grasp at memories of Before. Before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the school closed, before the fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. But Darling has a chance to escape: she has an aunt in America. She travels to this new land in search of America's famous abundance only to find that her options as an immigrant are perilously few. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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This is a coming of age story set in Zimbabwe around 2007 or 2008, told through the eyes of ten-year-old Darling. The author NoViolet Bulawayo (Elizabeth Tshele) was the first African woman to be shortlisted for a Man Booker Award.
The book starts off following a group of children in Zimbabwe: Darling, Stina, Chipo, Bastard and Godknows. As they run around stealing guavas, trying to figure out how to get the baby out of Chipo’s belly and watching the spectacle and drama of Sunday church services, they reveal a world of political unrest and turmoil. Through the oblique gaze of childhood, not fully understanding the politics and events occurring, and just accepting life as it is, these children show us something of their world with a humour and candour that made this an engaging read. There are clearly terrible events happening but this style makes them somewhat easier to read.
I found the second half of the novel when Darling goes to America and lives with her aunt far less interesting. Clearly the immigrant experience and feeling of displacement and disconnection is an important one, but somehow did not come off as well for me.
I am glad I read this book and I would like to read another by this author. Be aware if you do choose to read this book it does contain a childhood rape. ( )