Ambivalence of representation: African crises, migration and citizenship in NoViolet Bulawayo's 'We need new names'

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Periodical article

Title:	Ambivalence of representation: African crises, migration and citizenship in NoViolet Bulawayo's 'We need new names'
Author:	Ndlovu, Isaac
Year:	2016
Periodical:	African Identities (ISSN 1472-5851)
Volume:	14
Issue:	2
Pages:	132-146
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Africa Zimbabwe United States
Subjects:	diasporas women writers literary criticism images
About person:	NoViolet Bulawayo pseud. for Elizabeth Zandile Tshele
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2015.1108838
Abstract:	Bulawayo's 'We need new names' engages with underprivileged postcolonial cosmopolitans in its articulation of a vision that is essentially tragic. The novel compels us to contemplate how Africa has been and can be represented in order to get the attention of a hegemonic Western audience. This discussion also explores the ways in which Bulawayo negotiates some of the unstated ongoing imperatives of what has been called the age of superstar writers and commodification of literature which make an African writer acclaimed in the international arena. Bulawayo's narrative allows the application of the notion that today literary criticism should focus on the structure and dynamics of a specific cultural mode or the cultural production process; in the case of Bulawayo, the migrant writer's representation of Africa in the fraught late capitalist system skewed in favour of the West. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]