Depictions of Expectation Versus Reality in Noviolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names

Abstract

In the post-colonial era, Zimbabwe experienced a period of political and economic upheavals with a political regime whose ideology of socialism regimented Zimbabweans under an authoritarian state. In 1999, the opposition to President Mugabe and the ZANU-PF government grew considerably after the mid-1990s in part due to the worsening economic and human rights conditions brought about by the seizure of farmlands owned by white farmers and economic sanctions imposed by the Western countries in response. This economic upheaval was, and is still the cardinal reason why the citizens of Zimbabwe have almost not been a priority in the former regime, leading to their migration to seemingly better-off countries. No Violet Bulawayo is one such Zimbabwean who has left her motherland and now lives in America. In her novel, We Need New Names, she beautifully elaborates how the non-prioritized state of citizens in Zimbabwe is responsible for the huge number of immigrants who have left Zimbabwe and continue to leave, with hope as beautiful as a rainbow high up on their minds that maybe, just maybe, in a land far away from home, life can meaningfully reward their dreams which ironically, their mother country has so painfully failed to help them achieve.