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Shhhh Summary and Analysis

We Need New Names

by NoViolet Bulawayo Buy Study Guide

We Need New Names Summary and Analysis of Real Change, How They Appeared, We Need New
Names, and Shhhh

Summary

Real Change

The atmosphere of Paradise changes as the adults prepare to vote in an election. The adults smile more
and talk a lot about change and democracy; the women giggle at the men, trying to look beautiful. The
children discuss what happens when you vote while putting up posters that say “Change, Real Change”
(61) on the door of every shack, as they have been assigned by other children named Bornfree and
Messenger. They talk about what it means to vote and Bastard talks about how he will be president of
the country someday. They sing the national anthem and Godknows pretends to act like the NGO man,
taking pictures of the other children with a brick.

In bed, Darling describes her old life, saying that her family “had a home and everything and we were
happy” (64). She again describes their current shack, focusing on the bed and saying that even though
she has her eyes closed to pretend to be sleeping, she can tell that her mother is sitting there. There is a
soft knock on the door, five times, and a man comes in. Her mother and the man whisper and laugh and
then start to have sex.

Darling counts in her head and tries to get to sleep, knowing that he will be gone in the morning. She
thinks that sometimes she does not sleep at all, especially because she is scared of a dream she often
has where bulldozers and police come. In the dream, which seems like a memory made more vivid
through emotion, the adults yell at the men in bulldozers and at the police but their houses are all
demolished and they are left in rubble, choking on dust and yelling about the liberation war. One
woman comes running in high heels because she has been in town while this all has happened and starts
to yell that her baby son was in her house; the child is carried out of the rubble, dead, and she throws
herself on the ground and rolls around ripping her clothing until she is wrapped in a blanket and taken
away. Later, foreign news channels come to take pictures and videos. Still awake in bed, Darling hears
her mother’s man snoring and the sound of MotherLove singing sweetly down the street to tell people
her “shebeen” (70) is open for people to come drink.

On the day the adults all leave Paradise to vote, the children are all left behind. In the confusion and
solemnity of the day, the children do not play or raid the adults’ houses, but instead sit quietly under a
tree together all morning and afternoon. At one point it begins to rain, but they stay outside, becoming
wet and hungry and tired. Finally, the adults come back. They are joyful, with ink-stained fingers from
voting by fingerprint. That night, everyone has a party in MotherLove’s shack, where MotherLove makes
“brew” (72) all day and gives it to people at night. MotherLove starts to sing a prayer and the adults
dance with the children, telling them to “get ready for a new country, no more of this Paradise
anymore” (73).

How They Appeared

Darling goes back to her memory again, narrating how her family and all the others whose houses had
been demolished came to Paradise. She says that they did not “come to Paradise” (75), which would
imply choice, but rather appeared in bits and then in “swarms” (75) and “waves” (75). They portioned
out land by drawing in the dirt with sticks and they brought materials to build shacks: pieces of tin,
cardboard, and plastic. Some fought over what had not been brought and some stayed entirely quiet.
When these people regained their voices, they said that the white men who made them paupers before
independence were not as bad as the black men doing this to them now. Children also arrived, starting
out confused but soon knowing not to ask questions. MotherLove arrived with big barrels to make liquor
during the day, which the reader has just seen put to use in the last chapter. The chapter ends by noting
that the men tried to appear strong in public and even in front of their families, but the women
understood that the men were “falling apart” (79) and had to show the real strength.

We Need New Names

One day, the children decide they need to “get rid of Chipo’s stomach once and for all” (80). The girls,
Darling and Sbho, decide that the boys shouldn’t go, and they invite another girl named Forgiveness to
go with them. Sbho lays a “ntsaro” (81) and Chipo lies on it. The girls don’t know exactly what they are
supposed to do, so Darling collects a lot of rocks while Forgiveness undoes a rusty coat hanger. Sbho lays
out a metal cup, a leather belt, and a “purple round thing” (82). They decide that Darling should pee in
the cup. She does so and then Sbho sprinkles dirt in it and Chipo drinks it. They pull up Chipo’s shirt and
poke at her stomach. They give themselves the names of doctors from a TV show and Sbho and Darling
keep massaging Chipo’s stomach while Forgiveness flattens out the coat hanger completely. Finally,
Forgiveness tries to get Chipo to take off her pants, but she doesn’t want to. Forgiveness explains that to
get rid of a stomach you have to put the coat hanger through a woman’s “thing” (87) and all the way up
inside. Chipo asks if it will hurt and Forgiveness says she doesn’t know.

While the girls fight over whether they should do this, MotherLove appears. The girls are afraid that she
will be angry or take them back to their mothers to be hit, but when MotherLove realizes what has been
going on she is just sad. MotherLove hugs Chipo and starts to cry, and then Chipo starts to cry. A “purple
lucky butterfly” (90) lands on Chipo and then flies away, and Sbho, Darling, and Forgiveness run after it
yelling for luck.

Shhhh

Suddenly, Darling’s father comes home. He is incredibly sick: “unable to move, unable to talk properly,
unable to anything, vomiting and vomiting, Jesus, just vomiting and defecating on himself, and it
smelling like something dead in there” (91). He lays in Mother’s bed and when Darling first sees him, she
is so surprised and scared that she runs out of the shack screaming, causing her mother to say “Shhhh”
(92). Darling’s father calls her “my boy” (92) and her mother makes her hold his hand.

Darling remembers when her father decided to go to South Africa, against her mother’s wishes. He was
getting angrier and angrier back then, and on a certain day he told Darling’s mother that everyone else
was leaving and that they never should have come to Paradise to begin with. Mother of Bones was also
there and talked about God, which Father laughed meanly at. Mother argued that their whole family
was there and then told Darling rudely to stop listening and go play with her friends. Soon, Father left
for South Africa and didn’t send back any of the things he had promised.

Again, in the present, Mother tells Darling to “Shhhh” (95) - not to tell anyone that her father has
returned. It is now Darling’s job to take care of her father when Mother and Mother of Bones are not
there, so she cannot go out and play with her friends. They come to the shack, but she tells them she is
tired and then that she is sick. Finally, one day, Bastard tells her that she’s lying. They stand in silence a
while and then they all hear Darling’s father starting to cough from inside the shack. Darling runs into
the shack and slams the door. Her friends try to get her to open the door but eventually leave her alone.
Eventually he stops coughing, but Darling keeps sitting there thinking, “Die. Die now so I can go play with
my friends” (98).
Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro comes to pray for Father. He lights four colored candles, lays
out a white cloth, and then starts to pray loudly. Because it takes so long, Darling counts to a hundred
and then starts to think about prayer. Finally, Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro finishes and says
that God showed him that the spirit of Darling’s grandfather has left her and gone into Father. He says
that they will need to sacrifice two goats on the mountain and pay him five hundred U.S. dollars. He also
says that Mother is possessed by three demons, causing her to be unhappy and dangerous.

Since they cannot afford this sacrifice or payment, Mother of Bones begins to fast and pray on the
mountain and Mother returns to the border to sell things. Darling’s friends come back to her and tell her
that they know her Father is in the shack and that he has “the Sickness” (102), AIDS. They ask to come
inside and she takes them in there. They kneel around the bed and everyone is very quiet, looking at
Father’s bony body. Bastard takes Father’s hand and speaks to him kindly and Father tries to speak back
but cannot. They talk about Father’s death right in front of him, and Darling says that he is going to
heaven. Godknows starts to sing a song and then they all join in, holding Father’s hand and touching him
like he is “a beautiful plaything we have just rescued from a rubbish bin in Budapest” (105). Father looks
back at them with “a strange light in his sunken eyes” (105).

Analysis

Politics is constantly hinted at in We Need New Names, all through Darling's childish lens. When she and
her friends are younger and living in Paradise, they help hang up political posters that promise change
and watch as the adults leave to cast their votes in an election and return proud and hopeful, dancing
and singing long into the night. Furthermore, the children love to play imaginative political games having
to do with global domination and the worldwide search for Osama bin Laden. These hints at politics
through Darling's eyes and the children's games and discussions means that the focus of the book stays
on emotions and relationships, the ways that politics affected real people in Zimbabwe.

In this section appears the first of three chapters that take on a different narrative style than the rest of
the book. In "How They Appeared," the reader must grapple with whether Darling is narrating or
something else is happening, as the vocabulary changes slightly, the point of view turns from a clearly
conversational first-person style to third-person omniscient style, and none of the characters in the
story thus far are referred to specifically. Bulawayo uses these passages in the story at key points of
transformation for Zimbabwe and Darling to show the reader how her specific story functions as a part
of the broader narrative of Zimbabwe's history.
It is important to discuss the girls' attempt to help Chipo get rid of her stomach, not only because it is
one of the most gripping, strange, and emotional chapters of the book, but also because the line "we
need new names" (84) is spoken. Though the children don't really know what they need to do in order
to perform an abortion, taking on the names of doctors from the TV show ER helps them to feel that
they have the maturity and responsibility necessary for the act. Furthermore, they tell Chipo that
patients do not have names, underscoring Chipo's vulnerability and the way her identity has been taken
from her through this pregnancy.

At the end of this same chapter, a "purple lucky butterfly" lands on Chipo and then flies away. The
reader must wonder what this moment is supposed to foreshadow. Reading it in the context of the
book, Chipo is one of the only friends who stays in Paradise, raising her daughter and staying close to
Zimbabwe's political and economic strife while Darling is allowed to view it with sympathy from afar.
This does not seem particularly lucky, but perhaps this symbol indicates that "luckiness" itself must be
interrogated. In any case, there is a definite parallel when Darling, Sbho, and Forgiveness leave Chipo
behind with MotherLove when the butterfly flies away, as they chase after the small creature while
"screaming out for luck" (90).

Bulawayo's portrayal of AIDS through Darling watching and listening to her father die in the chapter
"Shhhh" is a vivid and harrowing image. She focuses on Darling's father's lack of control and on the
sound that he makes, which outs Darling's lies to her friends and makes her wish her father was dead.
Bulawayo particularly relies on repetition to make her point, for example writing, "I just stand there,
sweating and listening to the cough pounding the walls, pounding and pounding and pounding... he
keeps pounding and pounding and pounding until I just turn around and slam the door shut" (97). By
dwelling on the effects of the disease on one man, the author creates an unforgettable image of human
suffering that spreads to those around him.

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STUDY GUIDE NAVIGATION

About We Need New Names

We Need New Names Summary

Character List

Glossary

Themes

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Summary And Analysis

Hitting Budapest, Darling on the Mountain, and Country-Game

Real Change, How They Appeared, We Need New Names, and Shhhh

Blak Power, For Real, and How They Left

Destroyedmichygen, Wedding, and Angel

This Film Contains Some Disturbing Images, Hitting Crossroads, How They Lived, My America, and
Writing on the Wall

Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

Metaphors and Similes

Irony

Imagery

A Brief History of Zimbabwe

Literary Elements

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Quiz 2

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HomeStudy GuidesWe Need New NamesBlak Power, For Real, and How They Left Summary and Analysis

We Need New Names

by NoViolet Bulawayo Buy Study Guide

We Need New Names Summary and Analysis of Blak Power, For Real, and How They Left

Summary

Blak Power

The children are in Budapest again stealing guavas. They meet a guard who speaks to them with very
elevated English that they make fun of. At one point, Bastard spits on the ground which angers the
guard greatly. The guard yells at them and insults their fathers, but the children will not budge and taunt
him about not having a car, walkie-talkie, or handcuffs. The guard finally tries to hit Bastard with his
baton, but Bastard is able to get out of the way. As they yell back and forth, a red car drives up and the
guard runs over to open the gate. Stina, who knows a lot about cars, says that the car was a Lamborghini
Reventon and Darling says that she will have that kind of car when she goes to live with Aunt Fostalina in
the United States.

On another street, the children find a tree with guavas in front of a nice house. While they are up in the
tree, they suddenly see a swarm of people approach the house in a pack, yelling things like "Strike fear
in the heart of the white man!" (113). The people don't see them in the tree, so they are able to witness
the entire scene below while keeping very quiet. The people pound the door of the house with
machetes until a white man, white woman, and tiny dog emerge. The gang laughs raucously at the little
dog and then snatch it from the white woman and start to throw it around. Finally, one man kicks the
dog far over a wall. The white man yells to the crowd, "What do you want?" (118) and one man from the
crowd comes forward with a piece of paper. They are trying to kick him off the property to reclaim it for
Africans; they call him a "colonist" (120) even though he protests that he himself was born in Africa, as
was his father. The white man tears up the paper and then stomps and pummels it into the ground. The
crowd enters the house and the sounds of things being smashed can be heard outside. The children in
the tree fight about whether they should leave or wait for the people to all leave first. They stay, and
eventually the people come out. They grab the white people and take them with them; as they pass, the
white woman looks up in the tree and sees them.
When the mob is gone, the children come down from the tree and enter the house. The children are
shocked by how cold it is inside, and looking around they see broken furniture and electronics
everywhere. The children find a black mask and many pictures on the wall; they look at the pictures as if
in a museum, analyzing the people and moments in each. Seeing a picture of the queen, they talk about
crowns and gold, fighting over these foreign concepts. They go into the bedroom and and get in the big,
soft bed. Sbho suggests that they "do the adult thing" (129), so the boys get on top of the girls and lay
there. Suddenly, they hear the phone ring. They pick up the phone and pass it around until it gets to
Darling, who talks to the person on the other end. She tells the person about the gang that came and
took the white people; the person on the other end turns out to be the white couple's adult child.
Another voice, a white man's voice, comes on the phone and speaks to Darling in her own language,
which she finds funny but also disappointing because she was proud of speaking well in English. When
the phone call ends, they go into the kitchen and gorge themselves on food from the stocked fridge.
They attempt to eat with forks "like proper white people" (132), but soon decide this is too difficult and
go back to eating with their hands. When Godknows needs to use the toilet, they find a bathroom at the
end of the hallway. The room is clean and white except for "the words Blak Power written in brown
feces on the large bathroom mirror" (132).

For Real

Darling and her friends are playing when they hear singing approaching Heavenway, the cemetery. It is
Bornfree's funeral. Darling narrates about how she used to fear cemeteries and death but doesn't
anymore, and about how there have been many funerals lately for "the Change people, like Bornfree"
(135). Rather than cry, these mourners chant and raise their fists in anger. Darling says that after the
election there was much talk of how things would change, but time passed without change and then
men came for people like Bornfree. Along with the pack of mourners in black, Bornfree's mother wears
red and writhes like she is in pain, and two people from the BBC take photos and video. There are angry
speeches and prayers at the funeral and then the coffin is lowered into the grave. Bornfree's mother
shouts while the coffin is lowered and must be restrained; she is released once the coffin is buried and
the group begins to sing, but she runs off screaming partway through the song.

The children talk about what happens after death and then they start to play a game where they are
Bornfree and the men who killed him. They play for a long time, tiring themselves out, and when they
finally finish they see that the men from the BBC have been watching them. One man asks, "What kind
of game were you just playing?" (146) and Bastard says "Can't you see this is for real?" (146).

How They Left

The narration again switches from Darling's distinctive voice to a more poetic, omniscient point of view.
The two-page chapter describes "the children of the land... leaving in droves" (147). That is to say, many
people realize that change is not coming to Zimbabwe and that they must flee elsewhere to rebuild their
lives. The next chapter will show that Darling is one of these people who flees Zimbabwe, facing
difficulties finding acceptance, as this chapter foreshadows.

Analysis

Seeing major political moments in Zimbabwe's history through the eyes of children opens up big
questions. Darling and her friends watch from a guava tree as the house of a white couple living in
Budapest is taken by force and ransacked. The children, who have lived their whole lives in Zimbabwe
and interact almost exclusively with other black people, must question what it means to be African:
"'What exactly is an African?' Godknows asks" (121). This quote alludes to the important question of
how much of one's status as an African has to do with racial descent and its intersection with
Zimbabwe's colonial history.

Language is another major issue in We Need New Names. Though the book is written in English, it is
clear that Darling would be thinking and the children would be talking and playing in their native
language. However, Darling is clearly the best among her friends at English, as she is the one to talk to
the white man on the phone in English and is able to observe her friends misusing English at times. In
one somewhat humorous moment, Darling sees that Bastard has misspelled his own name while carving
it into a tree. This moment speaks symbolically to the influence of the West (through the use of English)
and the way that this influence interacts with African identity (causing one to spell his own name
wrong).

The themes of childhood and adulthood are strong throughout the book, as tragedy causes children to
age prematurely and adults to struggle in their roles as caregivers. A major way in which this comes
across is through young girls taking on the mannerisms of women, as if practicing their gender role for
later in life. For example, Darling narrates, "'Is it painful?' Sbho says. She is looking at me with her head
tilted-like, the way a mother is supposed to do when you tell her about anything serious" (96). However,
in this section of the book, we also see young boys at times playing the role of a motherly nurturer, such
as when Stina says, "They'll just pass and we'll go" (114) as the children sit in the guava tree and Darling
adds, "sounding like he is somebody's sweet mother" (114). In this case, Stina is actually comforting
Sbho, who often plays the role of the calming mother-figure in the group.

Bornfree's funeral is another very vivid moment in the novel. Again, politics is shown through the lens of
Darling and her friends as they hint at the government's response to the movement for change
supported by people like Bornfree who have been so adversely affected by the political situation of the
last few years. Bornfree's mother is an important character in this section; she wears red instead of the
customary black in protest of her son's untimely death and runs away from the cemetery in an act of
desperation, as if she is trying to escape reality.

After the funeral, another impactful moment occurs. The children stay in the area of the cemetery after
the funeral and act out Bornfree's killing, exhausting themselves through running and screaming, playing
the roles of the government, various vehicles, and Bornfree himself. However, when a man from the
BBC asks them what kind of game they were playing, Bastard responds, "Can't you see this is for real?"
(146). This moment demonstrates that the children understand on some level that they must use play to
understand the harsh and confusing world around them.

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STUDY GUIDE NAVIGATION

About We Need New Names

We Need New Names Summary

Character List

Glossary

Themes

Quotes and Analysis

Summary And Analysis

Hitting Budapest, Darling on the Mountain, and Country-Game

Real Change, How They Appeared, We Need New Names, and Shhhh

Blak Power, For Real, and How They Left

Destroyedmichygen, Wedding, and Angel

This Film Contains Some Disturbing Images, Hitting Crossroads, How They Lived, My America, and
Writing on the Wall

Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

Metaphors and Similes

Irony

Imagery

A Brief History of Zimbabwe

Literary Elements

Related Links

Essay Questions

Quizzes - Test Yourself!

Quiz 1

Quiz 2

Quiz 3

Quiz 4

Citations

RELATED CONTENT

Study Guide

Q&A

Lesson Plan

NoViolet Bulawayo Biography

We Need New Names Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for We Need New Names is a great resource to ask questions, find
answers, and discuss the novel.

Ask Your Own Question

Study Guide for We Need New Names

We Need New Names study guide contains a biography of NoViolet Bulawayo, literature essays, quiz
questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About We Need New Names

We Need New Names Summary

Character List

Glossary

Themes

READ THE STUDY GUIDE FOR WE NEED NEW NAMES…

Lesson Plan for We Need New Names

About the Author

Study Objectives

Common Core Standards

Introduction to We Need New Names

Relationship to Other Books

Bringing in Technology

Notes to the Teacher

Related Links

We Need New Names Bibliography

VIEW THE LESSON PLAN FOR WE NEED NEW NAMES…

Wikipedia Entries for We Need New Names

Introduction

Plot

Reviews

References

Further reading

VIEW WIKIPEDIA ENTRIES FOR WE NEED NEW NAMES…

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HomeStudy GuidesWe Need New NamesThis Film Contains Some Disturbing Images, Hitting Crossroads,
How They Lived, My America, and Writing on the Wall Summary and Analysis

We Need New Names

by NoViolet Bulawayo Buy Study Guide

We Need New Names Summary and Analysis of This Film Contains Some Disturbing Images, Hitting
Crossroads, How They Lived, My America, and Writing on the Wall

Summary

This Film Contains Some Disturbing Images

Darling grows up further and makes two close female friends: Marina and Kristal. Marina is from Nigeria
and Kristal is from America, but Darling comments that "she can't even write a sentence correctly in
English to show that she is indeed American" (201). After school, the girls often rush home to watch
porn together. They have been watching in alphabetical order, and today they watch a film in which a
robber breaks into a house and has sex with an older woman. When they get to "the real action" (203),
they always mute the film and make the noises themselves. The film ends and the girls discuss how men
sit on a toilet; upstairs, the phone is ringing, and Kristal tells Darling to stop ignoring it.

When Darling sees the caller ID, she realizes it's someone from home and she starts to worry. Recently,
people have been calling with bad news about police and deaths, and if not, then they always call to ask
for money. When she picks up the phone, it's Mother. Her mother scolds her for not calling more
frequently and laughs at her for "trying to sound white" (206). Mother asks if Darling gave Aunt
Fostalina her message, which was to ask for money to buy a satellite dish, and Darling lies and says yes.
Mother then puts Darling's friends on the phone which makes her feel dizzy. They ask her questions
about America, talking over one another. Godknows tells her that he's going to live in Dubai and then
Bastard gets control of the phone, telling her "you know you are lucky, Darling" (210), and finally Chipo
wears Darling out by asking questions about what she sees and telling her about the things she sees,
including her daughter. Darling starts to sing a song that they used to sing when it was windy outside
and Stina gets on the phone and tells her that Chipo was just singing the same song when going outside
to get her daughter, who is also named Darling. A package comes and Darling tells Stina to wait, knowing
she will not go back to the phone.

After she gets the package, she goes back downstairs to find her friends have skipped ahead in the
alphabetical listing and are watching "she-male" (213) porn now. This video makes them feel
uncomfortable, so Kristal brings up a link that one of her friends sent to her. They go to the site and are
immediately shocked by a loud scream; a girl is lying on the floor as a gang of women holds her down.
One woman in the gang has a dirty rag and a knife, and she uses the rag to clean the knife. At this point,
Marina runs upstairs and Kristal and Darling just cover their ears and listen to the screaming. When the
video ends, Kristal and Darling do not look at each other or say anything.

Hitting Crossroads

Kristal is not old enough to have a driver's license, but she decides to drive Marina and Darling to
Crossroads Mall anyway. Darling is very nervous at first, but Kristal drives competently enough so that
they all relax and start to have fun. Darling tells the reader that the reason they are out of school is that
someone brought a gun to school that morning so they sent all the students home. They drive through
town listening to Rihanna and then suddenly they hear a police siren. The girls are terrified and Kristal
pulls over to the side and parks, but the police car speeds past in pursuit of something else. Once they
have realized what has happened, the girls laugh and laugh and then get back on the road. Darling is so
excited that she starts to sing a song from her childhood at the top of her lungs, thinking of her old
school and her old friends before they all went to Paradise. Her friends tell her to stop, insulting her by
saying that she isn't singing English, and Darling retorts that Kristal can't speak English. Kristal goes quiet
and Marina high-fives Darling, but then Kristal replies that "its called Ebonics and it be a language
system, but it be our own" (224). Kristal accuses the other girls of "trynna sound like stupid white folk"
(224) and then Marina and Darling turn against each other when Darling and Kristal start to talk about
the way Nigerians speak and send scams over email.

The girls get to the mall and Darling spots a Lamborghini Reventon and again starts to yell, forgetting
where she is. Marina pulls her away, telling her that the car costs millions of dollars, which shocks
Darling because she had thought when she was younger that she could own that car when she went to
America. In the book store in the mall, Darling gets lost in thought and her friends go on without her.
They go upstairs to the electronics store and Darling finds a DVD where Morgan Freeman is playing
Nelson Mandela, which makes her feel proud. The girls go over to a jewelry store next and debate the
merits of expensive watches and rings. Finally, at JC Penney they take heaps of clothing with them into
the dressing rooms and play a game where they dress up for different occasions. After a while, another
woman comes in to try some clothes on and the girls decide to leave the mall, leaving a mess of clothes
behind. They race back to the car, staring openly at a woman wearing a hijab in the parking lot. As they
stare, Kristal brings up the kid who brought a gun to school, but then she doesn't say anything further
and they wave at the woman until she drives away.

When Darling gets home, she must immediately get back in the car with Aunt Fostalina to go to
Shadybrook nursing home, where Tshaka Zulu lives. Sometimes the man gets very agitated and Aunt
Fostalina has to go calm him down. When Tshaka Zulu gets agitated, he stops speaking in English and
will claim that he has a spear in his room, though Darling knows that all he has is a drawing of a spear.
Darling says that Tshaka Zulu isn't really crazy, but instead needs someone to talk to. Tshaka Zulu's room
is full of old things, especially memorabilia about Zimbabwe and pictures of his family. Tshaka Zulu likes
to talk about his family and was the one to give names to all of his children and grandchildren, even
once he moved away and had to give them over the phone.

How They Lived

This chapter is the third that enters a more omniscient narration, this time using "we" (239) rather than
"they" (147). The phrase "we smiled" (239) is repeated many times with reference to people asking
about their lives in Africa. Most of the chapter is about acclimating to America and especially to the
food. Cultural differences like not beating children are discussed, as well as how hard it is to get a visa to
America and how being made to speak English is so limiting. The chapter clearly departs from Darling's
life, talking about people who came over on student visas and then worked instead and hid in fear when
conversations started about "what to do with illegals" (244). People would refer to each other by
country rather than by name because they were too hard to pronounce but they would bond across
cultures over pictures of worried family members. The immigrants worked terrible, dangerous, low-
paying jobs, sending money home and never going to the hospital because they could not. They traveled
around the U.S. and took pictures and sent them home and brought more young family members over.
They were greedy for news of home when these people would come, and would also be shocked when
they called home and new young people answered the phone. Then they themselves had children,
American children, and gave them American names; they promised to bring these children back to their
countries to meet their elders, but without papers these were empty promises. Then the elders died and
their children grew up American and Googled their parents' countries rather than asking for stories. The
children grew up and married in the American way and had children of their own and fail to take care of
their parents, placing them in nursing homes where they are visited by memories of their own parents.
These immigrants die without the proper mourning from their children and so they are not retrieved by
the spirits of their ancestors and must wait forever.

My America
Darling has grown up even more and now works at a grocery store. On this particular day, she is sorting
bottles and cans when her manager comes in and compliments her. Darling watches as a thin young
woman goes into her manager's office and then a cockroach crawls out of one of her bottles which she
drops with a crash of broken glass while screaming. He tells her, as he often does, that she's "acting up"
(255) because she must have seen such things and worse in Africa. After work, Darling waits for Uncle
Kojo to pick her up; another employee named Megan who has been working at the grocery store for
fourteen years complains to Darling about one of the new workers. Darling starts to think about Megan
and then about herself growing old working at the grocery store and then her manager scares her by
touching her too intimately to get her attention. He asks her if she wants more hours over the weekend
and she agrees because she is saving money for community college, where she'll be starting next fall.

When Uncle Kojo comes, they just drive around for a while, which Darling says he has started to do
more and more since TK was sent to Afghanistan. This time, Uncle Kojo drives and drives and eventually
they meet a hooker who leans in the window asking for money and then starts to say Darling's name
over and over. When they finally get home, Aunt Fostalina puts out food; she has started cooking again
since Uncle Kojo stopped eating after TK left, and she now mostly must cook food from his country to
get him to eat. Instead of watching sports, Uncle Kojo now watches only television about the war,
looking for TK's face.

Darling has another job, cleaning the house of a man named Eliot. He is a man Aunt Fostalina knows
whose previous maid had to go back to Mexico. On one occasion when Darling is cleaning, a tiny dog
dressed in clothes comes in along with Eliot and his daughter while Darling is working in the kitchen. The
dog wants to play with Darling but she refuses, trying to communicate snidely to the dog. Eliot makes a
mess in the kitchen while he asks her about Zimbabwe. Eliot introduces Darling to Kate, who Darling
knows tried to kill herself recently at college and has an eating disorder. Eliot tries to get Kate to eat
something but she declines; she goes upstairs wearing an "Invisible Children T-shirt" (269) and comes
back after showering wearing the same Cornell T-shirt that Bastard once wore. When Kate finally
assembles a meal, Darling laughs at her for how sparing she is with food when she has so much. Kate
gets mad at Darling, but Darling isn't scared of being fired because she says Eliot wants to learn her
language so he can go to Zimbabwe and shoot an elephant and in addition he pays her well because of
"that Kony video" (271).

Uncle Kojo picks Darling up from Eliot's house and they start to drive aimlessly until Uncle Kojo's phone
rings. Aunt Fostalina summons them to Shadybrook where Tshaka Zulu greets them and hands Darling a
real spear. He is wearing traditional dress and has painted his body bright red; he yells to the sky and
asks where his "impi" (272) is. Darling realizes that "this is proper craziness" (272) while Uncle Kojo tries
to get her to translate what's going on. Tshaka Zulu keeps talking directly to Darling, pointing into the
distance and asking what she sees. The old man makes a grave speech about motherland and rule by
strangers and then rushes at a pizza boy standing not too far away. Just when Darling begins to fear for
the pizza boy, police cars approach with their sirens blaring and Tshaka Zulu throws his spear which
doesn't go very far. The police come out with their guns pulled, telling Tshaka Zulu to drop his weapon;
he will not.

Writing on the Wall

Darling is studying for a biology test one night, trying to put in an effort since Aunt Fostalina has been
pressuring her to study medicine or nursing in college. Marina and Darling text back and forth, and
Darling without much thought starts to write on her wall in marker. She goes downstairs and gets a
sponge, but this makes her wall look even worse than before. She thinks about how she and her friends
once drew a bunch of penises and bad words on a wall in Budapest. Marina texts her that she had sex
for the first time last night, and Darling informs the reader that Kristal is already pregnant. Darling tells
Marina that she made out with Tony, then elaborates on the story to the reader, saying that Amma
picked her up one day and took her to a club where she danced with Tony. Other couples also danced
incredibly close, almost performing sexual acts while "grinding" (280) and "daggering" (281). Darling
doesn't tell Marina much about it though, simply saying it was "cool" (281). She hears Uncle Kojo come
home downstairs and says that he is getting worse, drinking more and driving off for multiple days. To
make matters more complicated, the week before Darling had come home and caught Eliot walking
around in boxers at her house, confirming that he and Aunt Fostalina were having an affair. Darling goes
downstairs to check on Uncle Kojo; he is sleeping on the couch and she cleans up his bottles, sets out
food, and then takes off his shoes for him.

In the morning, Darling notices what she has done to her wall. She knows she has only half an hour until
Aunt Fostalina comes home from work, so she rushes to the basement and chooses a bunch of things to
hang on her wall: a batik, a clock in the shape of Zimbabwe, and a mask. She hangs the things on her
wall upstairs and thinks of the slab of ivory in the shape of Africa at Eliot's house that she stole; she
hangs this above her bed. She decides to call her mother over Skype and Chipo picks up the call. She
asks Chipo where the others are and she says that Bastard has gone to South Africa, Godknows is in
Dubai, Sbho has joined a traveling theatre group, and Stina is still around but sometimes disappears.
Chipo and her daughter Darling are the last ones left in Paradise. Darling starts to talk about being sorry
for how bad things are there, but Chipo gets very angry at her, telling her that seeing things on the BBC
is nothing like being there and that Zimbabwe is no longer her country because she abandoned it.
Darling is so upset by this that she throws her computer and then immediately regrets this. The
computer hits the mask on the wall and they both fall to the ground. Darling leaves her room and goes
into TK's, which is very clean and looks the same as when he left, with pictures of TK and his friends
dancing and his electronics all waiting for him. Darling reaches to "touch Tshaka Zulu" (289), hoping to
talk to his urn like she sometimes does. Suddenly, Uncle Kojo comes in and announces that they have
killed bin Laden. He tells her all about it, excited, and she thinks back to her childhood friends again,
discussing the game they made up about finding bin Laden. In her memory, they see the dog Ncuncu
who had been Bornfree's dog but now roamed all over. They chased her yelling "Bin Laden! Bin Laden!"
(292) and suddenly a lorry came and hit her, leaving blood and "crushed meat" (292) in the road.

Analysis

The chapter "This Film Contains Some Disturbing Images" returns to the theme of childhood and
adulthood, as the adolescent girls attempt to mimic the behavior of older women (emphasized by the
fact that the category of porn the girls watch during the chapter is "MILF"). They make the sounds of
sex, but at this point are still forming the tightest friendships with other girls, not entering the world of
dating and sex until chapters later. However, Bulawayo demonstrates that young girls in America are not
removed from quick maturity: Kristal, Darling's African American friend, is already pregnant before they
all graduate from high school.

The motif of masks returns in this section, helping to illustrate Darling's transforming identity. First,
when the children see a mob force a white couple out of their home in Budapest, they find a mask
hanging in the ransacked home. Darling narrates, "In the sitting room, we stand before the large mask
on the wall and stare at the black face, the eyes gouged out. It is a long, thin face, white lining the
eyebrows and the lips..." (215). She goes on to further describe the mask, which gives the impression of
an exotic African artifact uprooted and placed in the expensive home as a nod to the black,
impoverished, and less modernized lives happening just miles away in Paradise and places like it. Now,
embarrassed by writing on the wall and frantic at the idea of Aunt Fostalina finding the mess she's
made, she goes downstairs to find decorations to put on her wall to cover it. Darling now narrates, "I
find this weird mask; it's split in the center, one half white, the other black. The black half is split further
into numerous crazy patterns that I can't figure out, but it looks interesting to me..." (285). The mask
being half black and half white parallels Darling's internal conflict regarding whether she is now
Zimbabwean, American, or both, and even within her identity as a black person and Zimbabwean, there
is much complexity like the "numerous crazy patterns" (285). Soon after she takes the mask to her room,
however, she has an upsetting conversation with Chipo in which her friend accuses her of abandoning
Zimbabwe and throws her computer so that it hits the mask and knocks it off the wall, symbolizing the
way her sense of identity comes crashing down as a result of this encounter.

Kate is a quite minor character in the novel as a whole, but plays an important role in this section. Kate
is from an upper-middle class family from America, and one of the problem that plagues people,
especially females, in this class is eating disorders. We have seen this issue to some extent already,
through Aunt Fostalina's intense focus on watching white TV programs about exercise and getting slim
herself. Seeing Kate's extreme version of this problem reflects how this fixation in Aunt Fostalina is really
a creeping of American culture into her formerly Zimbabwean identity and self-perception. Kate is also
used as an ironic character, when Darling laughs at her for eating so little when she has access to so
much food, something she and her friends only had in Zimbabwe when they rifled through the
ransacked house in Budapest. This irony is compounded by the T-shirts Kate wears as a representation
of her identity - a shirt for an organization that works in Africa and the same shirt from Cornell that
Bastard had worn so many years before, drawing even more strongly the comparison between the two
characters.

When Darling lived in Paradise, her friends would often go to Budapest to steal things they were lacking
- primarily food. It is clear that Darling sees this as perhaps a crime but never a sin, as she thinks to
herself while at the church service on Fambeki that she has not committed any sins. What is interesting
is that even once Darling has lived in America for many years, she seems to take the same attitude
toward stealing. Darling casually narrates that she stole something from Eliot's house - an expensive
trinket in the shape of Africa - and she even hangs it on her wall, not fearing repercussions. This small
moment demonstrates that Darling's upbringing has affected her moral sensibilities even long after
becoming immersed in American society and values.

The final scene of the novel leaves the reader with a strange feeling, certainly not one of resolution. The
climax comes late in the story - Chipo confronting Darling about her abandonment of Zimbabwe - and
Darling runs away from this issue by throwing her computer and then leaving her room entirely. In TK's
room, Uncle Kojo tells her that troops have found bin Laden, and Darling thinks back on a memory in
which she and her friends played their game Find bin Laden and saw a dog hit by a bus. This unsettling
memory underscores the importance of the fact that Darling still so often bounces back in her memory
to her days in Paradise with her friends and also symbolically demonstrates how quickly a situation can
change.

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HomeStudy GuidesWe Need New NamesDestroyedmichygen, Wedding, and Angel Summary and
Analysis

We Need New Names

by NoViolet Bulawayo Buy Study Guide

We Need New Names Summary and Analysis of Destroyedmichygen, Wedding, and Angel

Summary

Destroyedmichygen

Suddenly, Darling is living in "Destroyedmichygen" (149) with Aunt Fostalina, Uncle Kojo, and TK, her
cousin. She reflects on Aunt Fostalina coming to Paradise to get her and taking one last picture of her
with her friends. Darling observes the strangeness of America; for example, she does not understand
snow and thinks it is silly for Aunt Fostalina to walk in place to keep up with something she is watching
on TV. She tells a darkly humorous story in which her mother took her to Vodloza the healer a few days
before she left. Vodloza tied a bone on a rainbow-colored string to her waist as a weapon to "fight off all
evil in that America" (152); Darling told the people at the airport that she had a weapon after setting off
the metal detector and Aunt Fostalina threw it in the trash.
Uncle Kojo is also critical of Aunt Fostalina working out, but he specifically critiques her thinness, saying
it is not African to look like this and that she shouldn't be following the ideals of the non-African women
on the television. Uncle Kojo also spends a lot of time watching television; he watches sports when he
comes home from work. Through a scene of Uncle Kojo watching sports, Darling reveals that Uncle Kojo
is from Ghana and that TK was born in America to Uncle Kojo and another woman. TK does not like to
interact with Darling and instead plays video games in his room by himself.

Darling spends a lot of time talking about the snow and the cold, which prevent her from playing
outside. She misses her friends, but she likes that she has enough food to eat. Aunt Fostalina's cousin
Prince also comes from Zimbabwe and stays at the house for two weeks before moving in with his
brother in Texas; he has burn scars and looks very old and tired. Uncle Kojo tells Aunt Fostalina that she
needs to cook more hot meals for him, which angers both Aunt Fostalina and TK. Darling and the family
watch Barack Obama become president, which makes Prince cry. TK eats and eats and Darling watches
children play in the snow. Prince polishes his wooden animals and talks to them.

Time passes and the snow starts to melt; Fostalina continues caring for Darling, asking her if she wants
food and if she is ready to go outside. Prince talks to himself more and more and sometimes has fits of
screaming and kicking. Darling thinks that when it warms up a bit more, she will go out and explore
Detroit, but she remembers that Stina told her that a country can disappoint you and that when you
come back to a country you've left behind you can be like a ghost. The time Darling enjoys most is when
other people from Zimbabwe come over to the house. They speak her language, talk loudly, cook
traditional foods, and dance energetically to familiar music.

Wedding

Darling and Aunt Fostalina's family drive to a wedding in Indiana. They get lost on the way and Uncle
Kojo gets fed up with the electronic navigator and stops using it. Aunt Fostalina does not realize what is
happening because she is asleep in the passenger seat, so they keep driving down long roads edged with
corn. Darling narrates about joining Washington Academy, where people teased her a lot at first, but
they switched targets when a new boy showed up. They call him a "freak" (168), a word Darling must
look up on the internet, and find he has hung himself at the school a week later. Uncle Kojo tells Darling
to keep an eye out for the wedding hall and she sasses him and suddenly a deer runs out in front of the
car, causing them to crash into it and waking up Aunt Fostalina. Aunt Fostalina is immediately panicked
because of the crash, and then she becomes angry that they are somehow an hour and a half late for
the wedding already. Aunt Fostalina makes calls for directions and they get back on the road. TK plays a
prank on his father in which he says that the police are following them but not to look back, which
makes Darling laugh but angers Uncle Kojo even more.
They finally get to the wedding of Dumi, a man Aunt Fostalina used to date. She has prepared a lot for
the wedding, even taking Darling to help her find a new dress and losing weight specifically to fit it. Dumi
is marrying an obese white woman. Dumi's parents and family couldn't come to the wedding because
they couldn't get visas, so messages from them are read and translated, though the translator leaves out
quite a bit. While she is in the bathroom, Darling overhears a conversation in her language about the
overweight bride; one woman suggests that Dumi is marrying her for "papers" (175). When the women
leave, Darling comes out to wash her hands and is engaged in conversation by a white woman who
wants to hear her speak her language and talks about how beautiful and terrible things are in Africa. She
tells Darling that her daughter, one of the bridesmaids, is in the Peace Corps; she has been to South
Africa and is soon going to Rwanda. She talks about how helpful her daughter was and how many great
pictures she took, reminding Darling of the people from the NGO. Back in the wedding reception, an old
man named Tshaka Zulu is singing a traditional song and many are recording it on their phones. Darling
is hungry but she still doesn't eat much in public because she doesn't use cutlery well, even after living in
America for some time. She watches Uncle Kojo eat and talk comfortably with someone else from
Ghana.

At one point in the reception, Dumi comes over holding a little boy. He talks to Aunt Fostalina, calling
her Fee, and then they sit happily in silence together, which makes Darling uncomfortable. Dumi finally
introduces the boy as Stephanie's son Mandla. The boy squirms to be let down and then throws the ball
he holds at Aunt Fostalina's plate, which Aunt Fostalina does not like but doesn't say anything about.
Dumi scolds the boy lightly, but Darling can see that "Mandla is used to getting what he wants" (183),
and the boy yells with a strange strength. Mandla throws the ball again, hitting a woman who just
smiles, but Darling gives Mandla "a serious eye" (184). Dumi asks Mandla for the ball and Mandla yells
that Dumi is not his dad, which causes some people to turn their heads. Then, Mandla throws the ball
and hits Darling in the eye and she immediately forgets everything about her surroundings, slapping him
three times and hitting him on the head with her knuckles twice. Everyone is immediately outraged, but
Tshaka Zulu tries to calm them down by saying "that is just how we handle unruly children in our
culture" (185). While Darling feels ashamed, Aunt Fostalina is not angry at her, which Darling attributes
to her pleasure at the bride not being beautiful.

Angel

One day, Darling tells Aunt Fostalina that she wants to go home and visit her friends, but she pays no
attention. Darling laughs with joy while eating a guava that Messenger has brought her when she
recently came to America. When she left, Darling had promised to write all the time, but after a few
months the communication died out. Even at first, she was not entirely truthful with them, only telling
them good things about America. Aunt Fostalina tells Darling that she can't go home because it's too
expensive and her visa has expired, which means if she leaves then she cannot come back to America.
Darling looks out the upstairs window at the cemetery across the road, where there are sculptures of
angels and lots of large gravestones. Darling compares this to Heavenway, the cemetery in Paradise,
where you were just buried under "a mound of red earth" (193) with no marker; she says that when she
first got to America she thought the cemetery was some kind of museum. She also comments on the
smooth roads that stretch over America but won't take her home.

Darling talks about the two homes in her head - her home before Paradise and her home in Paradise.
She says there are three homes in her Mother's and Aunt Fostalina's heads - their homes before
independence, their homes after independence, and then the homes after the problems, in Paradise and
in America; Mother of Bones has four homes including one from back when a king ruled Zimbabwe.
Returning to narrate the events at Aunt Fostalina's current home, Darling says that the Zimbabwean
president came on the TV in America; Aunt Fostalina turned it off and then Uncle Kojo turned it back on.
The president said, "We don't mind sanctions banning us from Europe; we are not Europeans" (194),
which Uncle Kojo saluted, saying this president is "the only motherfucker with balls on our continent"
(195). TK, now an older, more muscular version of himself, posts this on Facebook later and gets a lot of
likes.

Darling has quickly eaten all of her Zimbabwean guavas and mourns the amount of time it may be
before she has another. She hears Aunt Fostalina trying to order a bra in the other room, but the
saleswoman on the other end of the phone has trouble understanding Aunt Fostalina's pronunciation of
the word "angel" (197). Darling empathizes with this, telling the reader about how it feels to stumble
through English and about the way she has improved her English by watching television and growing her
vocabulary of specifically American words. Aunt Fostalina refuses to order online, so she is forced to
spell out the word for the woman on the phone and then immediately after hanging up calls a few of her
friends just to have someone to tell the story to in her own language. Finally, she goes downstairs,
slamming the door behind her, and Darling knows she is going to practice the entire conversation again
in the mirror.

Analysis

Analyzing Aunt Fostalina's family is in some ways even more rewarding than watching Darling with
regard to the ways people blend their identities as American and Zimbabwean/Ghanaian/African. For
example, Uncle Kojo's favorite pastime is watching American football, a uniquely American sport and
interest, but as he watches he yells at the TV in his native language, which is not the language he would
be seeing on the TV or a language he communicates in with anybody at home (since even his son does
not speak this language). Their family structure is American in that it is small, the members stay fairly
isolated from one another, and they interact using American mannerisms. However, Darling feels most
comfortable when her pseudo-extended family, other immigrants from Zimbabwe, are around.
As English is the dominant language in America, including at Aunt Fostalina's house, the specific uses of
the family members' native languages demonstrate and shape the relationships the characters maintain
with their native lands. For example, Aunt Fostalina switches into her and Darling's native language to
sternly finish a conversation, which if compounded over time could demonstrate to Darling that their
shared language is a language for times of anger rather than pleasure. However, Darling also notes in
herself and others how refreshing it can be to talk to someone in your own language; for example, she
watches Uncle Kojo speak his language with another man from Ghana at the wedding, laughing and
eating happily, and sees Aunt Fostalina call her friends immediately to talk in her native tongue after
having a bad encounter over the phone in English.

The theme of home is perhaps the strongest in this section of the book, as Darling discusses her previous
home in Paradise and Aunt Fostalina's house, which Darling doesn't seem to consider a home per se.
Bulawayo uses an interesting device through Darling's narration, both allowing her to reflect on the
specific lives of her family members and the recent history of Zimbabwe as a whole, writing, "There are
two homes inside my head: home before Paradise, and home in Paradise... There are three homes inside
Mother's and Aunt Fostalina's heads: home before independence, before I was born, when black people
and white people were fighting over the country. Home after independence, when black people won the
country. And then the home of thing falling apart... 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 then there was war; home when the black people got our stolen
country back after independence; and then the home of now" (193-4). Each of these homes Darling
describes is a snapshot in Zimbabwe's political history and its effects on the people of Zimbabwe, and
Aunt Fostalina's home is notably missing from Darling's own list at this point.

A parallel of interest in this section is that Darling lives next to a cemetery in both of her major homes in
the story - the cemetery called "Heavenway" in Paradise and the American cemetery across from Aunt
Fostalina's home in Michigan. Darling tells the reader that cemeteries used to scare her, but being close
to so much death makes her not fear them any more. Darling also uses cemeteries as one of many
comparisons about the differences in appearance between Paradise and Michigan; while Heavenway
had only mounds of dirt to mark graves, Darling at first thinks that the cemetery in Michigan is a
museum because of the grandeur of the statues and large gravestones.

The wedding in Michigan is a darkly humorous chapter, full of judgmental characters and cultural snafus.
It is suggested that Aunt Fostalina's old boyfriend, the groom of the wedding, is only marrying the bride
for a green card, an issue that is brought up rarely in the second half of the book even though the reader
gets hints that Darling is staying in the country illegally. Darling is also observant and critical of raising
children in America, criticizing how everyone allows a child named Mandla to throw things, even hitting
adults without any repercussions. One particularly interesting moment comes when a woman confronts
Darling in the bathroom, asking her questions and sympathizing about the state of affairs in Africa
(equating all African countries, as Darling notes with regard to a few characters). However, Darling is
genuinely surprised when the woman pronounces the name of a place in Africa quite well. It is evident
that the woman learned this pronunciation from her daughter, an activist in the Peace Corps, and from
this encounter it is clear that some facts about life in Africa can be communicated, making someone like
this woman feel knowledgeable and close to the issues there, but true understanding can be much
harder to develop.

Next Section

This Film Contains Some Disturbing Images, Hitting Crossroads, How They Lived, My America, and
Writing on the Wall Summary and Analysis

Previous Section

Blak Power, For Real, and How They Left Summary and Analysis

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About We Need New Names

We Need New Names Summary

Character List

Glossary

Themes

Quotes and Analysis

Summary And Analysis

Hitting Budapest, Darling on the Mountain, and Country-Game

Real Change, How They Appeared, We Need New Names, and Shhhh

Blak Power, For Real, and How They Left

Destroyedmichygen, Wedding, and Angel

This Film Contains Some Disturbing Images, Hitting Crossroads, How They Lived, My America, and
Writing on the Wall

Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

Metaphors and Similes

Irony

Imagery

A Brief History of Zimbabwe

Literary Elements

Related Links

Essay Questions

Quizzes - Test Yourself!

Quiz 1

Quiz 2

Quiz 3

Quiz 4

Citations

RELATED CONTENT

Study Guide

Q&A

Lesson Plan

NoViolet Bulawayo Biography

We Need New Names Questions and Answers

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Study Guide for We Need New Names

We Need New Names study guide contains a biography of NoViolet Bulawayo, literature essays, quiz
questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About We Need New Names

We Need New Names Summary

Character List

Glossary

Themes

READ THE STUDY GUIDE FOR WE NEED NEW NAMES…

Lesson Plan for We Need New Names

About the Author

Study Objectives

Common Core Standards

Introduction to We Need New Names

Relationship to Other Books

Bringing in Technology

Notes to the Teacher

Related Links

We Need New Names Bibliography

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Introduction

Plot

Reviews

References

Further reading

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