NoViolet Bulawayo’s<i>We Need New Names</i>(2013): Mobilities and the Afropolitan picaresque

Cobo-Piñero, Rocío

doi:10.1080/17449855.2018.1540161

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The campaign, whose name translates into English as "Move the Rubbish" (Omelsky, 2020: 59), thus echoed the dichotomous "thinking about dirt and cleanliness" typical of the colonial period (Harris, 2008: 40), effectively disclosing the oppressive nature of the event and the deep-rooted colonial legacy in contemporary Zimbabwe. Similarly, Bulawayo reproduces this rhetoric through her use of the language of disgust and the image of the abject, which has been a major focus of analysis in the critical study of this literary work (e.g., Cobo-Piñero, 2019;Suárez-Rodríguez, 2019;Toivanen, 2015). In this respect, particularly noteworthy is the reiteration of the word "kaka" in allusion to Paradise, as when Bastard states that, unlike in their slum, "Budapest is not a kaka toilet for anybody to just walk in" (Bulawayo, 2013: 12).…”

Section: Socially Dead Strangers In a Zimbabwean Necropolismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, Habila's critique of Bulawayo's stereotyped portrayal of Africa as a space of suffering and death increased the interest in We Need New Names within the framework of the efforts to contest and problematise Taiye Selasi's (2005Selasi's ( /2013 celebratory notion of the "Afropolitan" (e.g., Cobo-Piñero, 2019;Stobie, 2020;Toivanen, 2015). In her famous essay "Bye-Bye Babar", Selasi refers to Afropolitans as "the newest generation of African emigrants" and describes them as internationally mobile and culturally hybrid, emphasising their multilocal sense of belonging (2013: 258).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Strangers and Necropolitics in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names

Suárez-Rodríguez

2022

Int. j. Engl. stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As a contribution to the recent call for the study of the figure of the stranger in African spaces (Ikhane, 2020), this article examines the first half of NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (2013). The main reason for this, it is argued, is that the description of the protagonist’s pre-migratory living conditions throughout this part of the narrative reveals a Zimbabwean nation in which the necropolitics resulting from the failures of decolonisation have turned certain segments of the population into strangers in their own land. Their “living dead” status in a situation of social and spatial marginalisation recalls, in particular, the notion of the stranger as the “socially dead” (Rothe & Collins, 2016). However, unlike this and other classical strangers living in a Western urban context, the literary strangers studied here do not represent an othered minority in the community but, rather, exemplify what appears to be a widely shared condition of “strangerness” in some contemporary African cities.

show abstract

Section: Socially Dead Strangers In a Zimbabwean Necropolismentioning

confidence: 99%