The language you chose for your protagonists, the children who live in Paradise, is a mixture of African and English vocabulary, neologisms, incantations, curses. People in Zimbabwe are working hard to get by, says Bulawayo Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi But even in that part of the novel I didn't set out to write an autobiographical text. To be an immigrant, to struggle with fitting in, find my way in a new space. I actually allowed her to borrow from mine, because I kind of know what it is like to be an outsider. So it is when she crosses the border to the US that our stories started to sort of intersect. We grew up as kids in working countries grow up - because the country at that time was really functional.īut as Darling does not know the stability my generation enjoyed and experienced, her childhood is really under pressure. Zimbabwe in the 80s was this land of promise. My childhood was very normal and beautiful. Darling, the narrator and main protagonist in Zimbabwe, does not have a strong connection with me. The first half of the novel does not have much of me.

Even if it's just a small part I feel like it gives my work the certain charge. There are parts of me as in most of my work. Many readers think your novel 'We Need New Names' is strongly autobiographical. I believe you can translate across borders. But it should not be confined to Zimbabwe. We needed new ways of seeing things, new ways of doing things, new leadership. And by saying 'we need new names' I was speaking for the need for us as a people to sort of re-imagine, rethink ourselves, rethink our way, think about where we were going. Recent history, I should say, when the country was coming undone, due to failure of leadership. I wrote the novel at a specific time of my country's history. And being in the US for about 13 years without being able to go home made me very homesick. 'No' in my language means 'with.' Of course Bulawayo is my city, my hometown. I decided when I was at a certain age to honor her. I grew up with a sense of something missing. She passed away when I was 18 months old, and she wasn't really spoken about that much.

Why did you choose this name, NoViolet Bulawayo? I like to remind people that I come from a culture where you grow up with quite a bunch of names. Elizabeth Tshele, even though it's my birth name, is the name that is just in my official documents. How do your colleagues and students address you? Bulawayo, you teach fiction at Stanford University.

We need new names novel