Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site


Join Us Oct. 6-7 for the Banned Graphic Novels Book Club! Get Details  
> FAQ Home
> Tag: We Need New Names

“…leaving your country is like dying, and when you come back you are like a ghost…”

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

by Leave a Comment

Cbr14bingo Adapt/bingo – the story is about Darling adapting to life in Michigan after growing up in a Zimbabwean shanty We Need New Names is what I would call a fictional memoir based on the author’s childhood experience of moving from Zimbabwe to the United States. Darling, a teen living in Michigan with her aunt’s family, remembers growing up in a shantytown called Paradise with her friends, dreaming of moving to the United States, and then experiencing the reality of life here. This is a […]

We Need New Names

by 1 Comment

I recently moved to Malawi, so as part of this year’s Cannonball I’m going to include at least ten books by African writers. Last year I started with Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart and then picked up Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple  Hibiscus and then the superb Half of a Yellow Sun, which was one of my favorite books of last year–seriously, go read it immediately. We Need New Names received a lot of praise (NPR’s Great Reads of 2013, NYTimes’ Notable Books of the Year, finalist for […]

You could also use some new ideas

by Leave a Comment

Not only did Bulawayo’s debut novel make it on to the longlist for the Booker, it got to the shortlist. It’s won some other awards too. It seems if you have a child as your narrator, people are willing to overlook AN AWFUL LOT when it comes to the book itself. I found it a patience testing bore and can’t really see why people are loving it so much. The full review is on my blog here and my Booker Longlist challenge continues with my […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo