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“In America, roads are like the devil’s hands, like God’s love, reaching all over, just the sad thing is, they won’t really take me home. There are two homes inside my head: home before Paradise, and home in Paradise; home one and home two. Home one was best. A real house. Father and Mother having good jobs. Plenty of food to eat. Clothes to wear. Radios blaring every Saturday and everybody dancing because there was nothing to do but party and be happy. And then home two—Paradise, with its tin tin tin. There are three homes inside Mother’s and Aunt Fostalina’s heads: home before independence, before I was born, when black people and white people were fighting over the country. Home after independence, when black people won the country. And then the home of things falling apart, which made Aunt Fostalina leave and come here. Home one, home two, and home three. There are four homes inside Mother of Bones’s head: home before the white people came to steal the country, and a king ruled; home when the white people came to steal the country and then there was war; home when black people got our stolen country back after independence; and then the home of now. Home one, home two, home three, home four” (Bulawayo, 86).
In NoViolet Bulawayo’s ‘We Need New Names’, home is both one of the main themes and a reoccurring theme in the novel. Home can be expressed through and transition from one space to another. This can be seen in the extract where Darling laments about her homes in the past and present, as well as how many homes she and her surrounding family has changed over the years. Darling influences her surrounding families’ number of homes as they endure shifting independence, war and forced removal. In this essay, I will explore Darling’s thoughts about her home, her sense of belonging and attachment to it, and what the theme of home says about the novel as a whole.
The novel explores the theme of the home well because for Darling (and for supporting characters) her conceptualization and the entire meaning of home does not only invoke a strong sense of belonging, but also invokes particular feelings such as being at home, belonging to a particular place and being attached to that specific space. Home one and home two, and what she imagines America to be like, is Bulawayo’s way of showing that home (imagined or not) is an ever-shifting construct that reflects and forms the inhabitants’ desires, memories, realizations and transitions. The novel explores the fluidity of a home not as a stable construct, but as an unstable one at that. The instability of home is formed from and reflects Darling’s desire to go back home to Paradise, her memories before Paradise, which she considers being a ‘real house’, and her false perception of the possible good life in America. The novel’s theme as a whole questions the meaning of a home, but most importantly asks which home is the true home when migration separates one home into two or, in Darling’s case, three places. Which home of Darlings is her true home? To which one does she belong after she left home? Home one, home two or America? This can be said for other characters in the novel as well. Take the example of Darling’s mother, aunt and Mother of Bones. Darling’s mother and aunt have three homes respectively while Mother of Bones has four. Bulawayo’s portrayal of the home being numbered after life-altering events, such as after or before independence or when things fell apart, shows the reality of home is shaped by where one lives. Like it was mentioned earlier in the paragraph, home is a fluid construct that shifts and morphs according to the inhabitant’s environment, and throughout the novel, through her experience of her various homes from home one to America, she learns the complexity of having a home, being at home and feeling homely.
Furthermore, Darling is the chosen character most applicable to the topic of the essay not only because she is the protagonist of the novel, but since she is the one struggling the most with her feelings of home. Darling recollects her memories of her various homes before Detroit in an almost sad, grieving manner as she likens the road that divides her house and the cemetery to a road she can walk a path on, but ultimately it cannot “take [her] home” (Bulawayo, 86). The American road to home is described as both “like the devil’s hands” and “like God’s love” (Bulawayo, 86); it is a contradictory statement as God and the Devil are the opposite ends of the moral spectrum. They represent good and evil, so the road that “reach[es] all over” (Bulawayo, 86) is meant to represent the road she can take but cannot take since it will not lead her back home to where she wants to be. Not only that, but it also represents the experience of an individual that has migrated: they migrated elsewhere to seek a better life and they cannot return to the life and home from which they originated no matter how bad they want to. For Darling, having a home is to belong and a sense of belonging is something she desperately craves as she struggles to acclimatize to the harsh reality of America. The America she resides in is a stark difference from the good life, the America, the home she imagined it to be. As she reminisces on her homes before and in Paradise, Darlings speaks about what made those homes homely and what it meant to have a homely home. Nevertheless, home one and home two are just her homes that she cannot return to, and her home in America is one that she cannot feel homely in, despite trying her best to make it a home. Separated from the Zimbabwean culture and alienated from the American culture, one can say that she does not have a sense of home at all. Thus, the lack of a ‘homely’ home shows that Darling does not feel like she belongs anywhere, not in Paradise and not in America, making her the perfect candidate for the novel’s theme of home.
Home is a word full of meaning, and for Darling, home is a complex subject after she has been forcibly removed from it or left home in search of a better future thus the meaning varies from person to person. It is evident in the extract that Darling has two homes which she names home one and home two: “home before Paradise, and home in Paradise” (Bulawayo, 86). Her sense of home is shaped by her cultural identity and a need for belonging where she lives. She associates home before Paradise with family, parties and happiness, a safe space. Home one, her childhood home, suggests that her fond memories of kinship, family and sanctuary are what made her home one “a real house” (Bulawayo, 86), thus making it a homely home for her. The transition from having “nothing do to but party and be happy” before Paradise to “Paradise, with its tin tin tin” (Bulawayo, 86) effectively shows Darling’s transition from financial security to a state of poverty. The “tin tin tin” (Bulawayo, 86) is an allegory to show that Darling’s home in Paradise is a shantytown where improvised houses are constructed from metal. She described home two in one sentence for the lack of “good jobs, plenty of food to eat [and] clothes to wear” (Bulawayo, 86) are the physical essentials she needs to fully belong to her home. Without it, and the happiness that came with parties and security, Paradise does not feel like home for Darling. Home one and home two are stark contrasts from each other, yet she considers them to be her homes. Being separated from her home and being unable to return home puts Darling’s identity in a vulnerable position. This stresses that Darling can have as many homes as she likes, but, in reality, she will not feel at home within either since she does not feel as if she belongs.
In conclusion, home is supposed to invoke strong feelings. NoViolet Bulawayo manages to showcase the struggles of migration and the effect it has on a person’s sense of home and belonging. The entire idea of home in the novel constitutes Darling’s thoughts on what makes her home homely or unhomely. When she struggles with the concept of feeling alienated and separated from her two homes, then her entire thoughts of home affect her identity within her Zimbabwean and American settings.
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