We Need New Names is a book that criticizes social and political evils happening in Zimbabwe, other parts of Africa and the supposedly paradise-like place; America. Bulawayo criticizes these evils by using minors with weird names; Darling, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho, Bastard, and Stina. She puts them in a slum called Paradise, where they ironically suffer from a myriad of things; political violence, rape, lack of basic needs, and the effects of HIV. Most of these problems are evident in what Darling goes through, both in Zimbabwe and America.
Bulawayo moves her protagonist; Darling, from Zimbabwe to America with the intention of addressing the ills done in both Africa and the western world. She lampoons the notion among Africans that America is the land where milk and honey flow.
In Africa, she addresses the rampant cases of rape, fake preachers, racism, and invasion of Africa by Chinese merchants, among other issues. In America, she seeks to attack the common belief among Africans that there are no problems in America. America also serves as the best setting to help address other themes like breakage of marriages, pornography, and general misplacement of values among teens.
This paper analyses one scene in Bulawayo’s book, which helps point out some of the social evils that the writer satirizes. The scene in question is that involving Darling and her African-American and Nigerian friends watching online pornography. They reduce the volume and act out the mourning and screaming on their own. This scene, together with the one in Zimbabwe, where Darling’s friend is impregnated by her own grandfather, depicts a world where the youth are exposed to sex and sexual violence at very tender ages.
It shows how much teens know regarding sex and related issues. Through this scene, Bulawayo manages to satirize the rampant habit of parents not taking proper care of their children. She suggests that parents should find ways of ensuring that information reaching their children through the internet is censored.
This scene faithfully depicts the situation that most American teens experience. At the same time, it addresses the negative implications that technology brings, especially to teenagers who have nobody to control what they should access from the internet and all the other sources of information that come with technology and what they should not. It is the technology that helps Darling and her friends get access to pornographic materials online.
While in America, Darling stays with her aunt, who is married to a Ghanaian. She meets a step-cousin who is so much affected by the culture of American teens. He sags his pants and is so much addicted to watching video games. Through him, Bulawayo continues to talk about misplaced values among American youths because of lack of proper guidance from their parents and guardians.
This scene, therefore, talks about teens whose parents abandon them and have to struggle to take care of themselves. In the process of looking after themselves, they find themselves in the wrong companies.
These companies often lead them into doing all sorts of socially unacceptable behaviors like watching pornography, spending their time playing video games, handling dangerous weapons, among other evil things. What Bulawayo proposes, as is evident in this scene, is that parents and guardians should ensure that their children engage in doing things that are socially acceptable at all times.