When Old Names Refuse to Go: Myths, Power, and Subversion in NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names

Abstract

Zimbabwe’s post-independence political and economic crises continue to be a subject of intense fictional and non-fictional representation. However, none of the recent fictional representations has generated as much interest as NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (London: Vintage, 2014). This article explores the entanglement of myth, power, and subversion in Bulawayo’s novel. Partly drawing on Roland Barthes’ notion of myth, the article critically examines Bulawayo’s representation of postcolonial dictatorship. It argues that running through the text is a subtle but powerful subtext that brings out into the open the source of the perennial state of crisis. Bulawayo deploys childhood as a vehicle to expose, excoriate, and subvert an all-powerful gerontocratic postcolonial dictatorship, at the centre of which are the foundational names and myths that stifle any attempts to introduce new names, change, or alternative ways of existence. The overall conclusion of this article is that through blunt, naively honest voices, and the reality of victimisation, abjection, and death, Bulawayo’s novel (re)presents possibilities of the generation of counter- narratives that unmask the inherent fragility of established myths.