we need new names by noviolet bulawayo summary

They walk back to their village, called Paradise, eating guavas and “spitting the peels all over to make the place dirty” (13). They find another house and steal guavas from it.

Eventually, Stina gets tired of this and walks away the other children follow and at the street corner they start to shout insults at her. The woman asks to take some pictures of them and they allow her to tell them where to stand and to say “cheese” (11). Darling notices that the woman is also wearing a necklace that has a golden charm of a head shaped like Africa. When they ask her in return, she says that she’s from London and that “this is first time visiting dad’s country” (9). The woman throws some of the food in the trash, causing Chipo to almost run after it, and asks the children how old they are. She is thin, smiling, and barefoot she holds a piece of half-eaten food and has a camera around her neck. When they get to the street they plan to steal from, a woman calls to them from her window and then comes outside to talk to them. She says that they started stealing guavas from Stina’s uncle, but have now started systematically stealing from the streets of strangers’ houses.

The children talk about how babies are made, how long it will be before the baby is born, and whether it will be a girl or a boy Darling notes that “The first baby is supposed to be a boy” (5).ĭarling describes the sights and smells of Budapest, so different from their village. They must stop midway through their journey for Chipo to rest because she is pregnant, which the children don’t fully understand and which has caused Chipo to go mute. The children are not supposed to go there, but they are hungry, so they sneak out of their rundown village and break into a run, yelling and singing, as soon as they get to the bush. The novel opens with the Zimbabwean children Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho, Stina, and Darling (the story’s protagonist and narrator) on their way to Budapest to steal guavas.

We need new names by noviolet bulawayo summary