We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Abstract

January–February 2014 • 55 Fleur Adcock Glass Wings Bloodaxe Books A whimsical collection of poems connected by author Fleur Adcock’s observation and interaction with arthropods all over the globe, from her native New Zealand to her current home in London. The simple format makes it easy to understand the stories of people who have touched Adcock’s life as she, in turn, reaches out to those closest to her. Abe Kōbō The Frontier Within Richard F. Calichman, tr. Columbia University Press Sometimes called “the Japanese Kafka,” Abe Kōbō is primarily known for the audiencedazzling science fiction and plays he produced in postwar Japan. The essays collected in The Frontier Within display his abilities both as a serious intellectual thinker and entertaining popular writer. Kōbō turns his gaze to imperialism, US–Japan relations, literary theory, and historical materialism. Nota Bene tough exterior hiding love and pain; his son Marin, whose happy New York family cannot erase his loss of Rosmarina, which “matched his heart’s circumference perfectly”; Vinca, Luka’s beloved younger sister, whose grandchildren hide beneath their Manhattan brownstone beds from imagined fascists and communists ; Katarina, the Croatian-born American who envies her cousins’ sense of rootedness; and throughout , stroke-paralyzed Luka’s presenttense memories, encapsulating the history of the island and his family. Never romanticized, these characters live the painful split within Croatian culture between those who remain “at home” and those who emigrate. A freethinking artist whom the island suffocates, Jadranaka flits between Rosmarina and the mainland , at home in neither space, while Magdalena clings to Rosmarina, sternly instructing its young. Here, too, are tradition-bound but often narrow-minded islanders, devout and lapsed Catholics, clear-eyed atheists , nationalists who suffered under both Italian and communist rule, brutal informers, successful arrivistes with ties to New York’s high culture, humble but self-sufficient diasporans , and present-day toughs who find meth heaven in America. The First Rule of Swimming casts a spell with its terse but lyrical prose, edgy yet vulnerable characters, sense of place, and family secrets. Initially slow moving, it gathers speed as the American odyssey unfolds, while its mysteries, once fathomed, highlight the longing for freedom and the power of love for family and “home.” In “the cloudy water of his dying,” Luka ponders the centuries-long history of Rosmarina and its islanders, wondering: “In addition to the happy unions that propagate the human race . . . how many rapes and murders, how many kidnappings, illicit trysts, and unhappy couplings have gone into the making of any one person?” Yet he muses, “But the island is constant . . .” Michele Levy North Carolina A&T University NoViolet Bulawayo. We Need New Names. New York. Reagan Arthur Books / Little, Brown. 2013. isbn 9780316230810 Written with kinetic energy that crackles with life, NoViolet Bulawayo ’s debut novel should be read by anyone interested in emerging voices in world literature. At times joyful, funny, melancholic, ferocious, and defiant, Bulawayo’s first-person narrator, Darling, is a trenchant observer of the human condition. After meeting a wealthy visitor from England near her home in Zimbabwe, a young Darling takes note of the visitor’s “smooth skin that doesn’t even have a scar to show she is a living person.” Darling is adept at reading people for signs of privilege or privation , camaraderie or confrontation . Whether as a young girl who 56 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews finds comfort in the company of her friends as they steal guavas and try to avoid the harsh world of adults or as a teenager who, after years living in the United States, has become jaded and cynical, Darling speaks to us with a voice that is direct, powerful , and believable. On the return of her father, ravaged by HIV/AIDS after living in South Africa, Darling says: “Father comes home after many years of forgetting us, of not sending us money, of not loving us, not visiting us, not anything us, and parks in the shack, unable to move, unable to talk properly, unable to anything, vomiting and vomiting.” Bulawayo humanizes personal hardship by avoiding platitudes and letting Darling speak her own truths. In Zimbabwe, Darling and her friends at times witness violent events. Bulawayo...