We Need New Names

Loss is sprinkled throughout the narrative and takes the form of losing one’s people, possessions, country, innocence, and identity. One of the first losses glimpsed in the narrative is the loss of Darling’s grandfather, who was killed before her birth. No one in Paradise talks about him because he was murdered by whites for harboring freedom fighters. Although he’s described in passing, Darling’s childlike introspection picks up on the probable fact that “there are times I have caught Mother of Bones muttering, and even though she doesn’t say, I always have a feeling she is muttering [to grandfather]” (26). This comment is a subtle nod to the fact that Mother of Bones has lost her husband, and the loss is powerful enough to keep her speaking to him even though no one else remembers him.

Another major loss is that of Darling’s father, who has left the family for better pastures in South Africa. Darling mentions that “when the pictures and letters and money and clothes and things he had promised didn’t come, I tried not to forget him by looking for him in the faces of the Paradise men” (95). Darling’s father later resurfaces and is dying from AIDS. He returns home to die and mistakes Darling for a son. Although Darling doesn’t recognize him and is afraid of his monster-like appearance now that he’s sick, she and her friends sing and dance for him, calming him. When she arrives in America, she thinks of her dead father and wishes he could be buried in a nice cemetery like American ones.

Darling and her friends almost initiate an abortion on their friend Chipo because she can’t play with them as well as she used to. Moreover, they all know that young girls like Chipo can die from pregnancy, and they don’t want this to happen to their friend. The reader learns that Chipo was raped by her grandfather, an incident which caused her to go mute for a while. This loss of innocence mirrors the loss of innocence that Darling and her friends experience in trying to mimic adult doctors on television and give Chipo an abortion. Although it’s almost played out like a game to Darling and her friends, when MotherLove interrupts them and holds Chipo in her arms as the two cry, it’s clear that MotherLove senses the plight of Chipo and the potential loss as well.

Loss of innocence is also noted once Darling moves to America and finds that she must put away childish dreams in order to work for a living, underscoring the loss of innocence of many who flee their countries in search of the American Dream. This sort of loss also ties into loss of country, as many can never go back to their countries because they don’t have the immigration paperwork to return to America. Those who experience the loss of one’s country or home often lose their former property and possessions, as witnessed by Darling’s family loss of their brick home and neighborhood when police bulldozed everything. As such, the narrative paints a bleak picture of hope that’s shrouded in loss for many immigrants. 

Violence is a steady undercurrent in the narrative, and much of this destruction and brutality take place on a political scale. Although Darling mentions violence as it happens around her, the reader can understand that the political violence happening around Darling is part of the larger, violent campaign of Zimbabwe’s president, Mugabe. Mugabe wrested power for blacks, and his countrymen and women believed that they would be free from the whites that had previously ruled them and subjugated them to terror and violence. However, Mugabe turned into a dictator as well. He set about reclaiming land for blacks, but these tactics often left blacks displaced in the process.

One example of this is Darling’s old neighborhood and family home. It was a home made of bricks, in a quiet neighborhood, until one day bulldozers came and razed the entire place:

Then the lorries came carrying the police with those guns and baton sticks and we run and hide inside the houses, but it’s no use hiding because the bulldozers start bulldozing and bulldozing and we are screaming and screaming (67).

The soldiers almost kill an old woman and, in the process of destroying homes, do in fact kill a child (ironically called Freedom) that was sleeping inside one of the homes. This violence haunts Darling and causes her to have nightmares about the episode. It also displaces her family and forces them to finally reside in the shantytown of Paradise. 

The death of Bornfree is another example of political violence. Bornfree was an advocate for a change to the violent government. He, along with his best friend Messenger, placed flyers up in Paradise encouraging the people to vote for change in an upcoming election. For this, Bornfree was violently killed by a pro-Mugabe mob as a warning for others. Mother of Bones, Darling’s grandmother, foreshadows this when Bornfree and Messenger talk to her and Darling about the inevitable change coming. She calls them fools, and says, “What do they think they are doing yanking a lion’s tail don’t they know that there will be bones if they dare?” (32). At Bornfree’s funeral, Darling admits that Bornfree hasn’t been the only casualty: “We have seen quite a few coffins like that lately; it’s the Change people, like Bornfree, in the coffins” (135).

Although violence abounds in Zimbabwe and greater Africa in the narrative, Darling and her friends also hint at the violence that Darling will soon come to know once she reaches America when they play with toy guns that are made in America. When Darling finally moves to America, she sees violence on the streets of Michigan, and she even has to deal with a school shooting that is luckily thwarted. Moreover, Darling thinks about running from the police at one point but doesn’t because she knows that, being black, she can be shot and killed for “doing a little thing like that if you are black” (221), and so remains in the car. Events like school shootings, police shooting of minorities, and gun control are hot topics in contemporary America and are all tied to politics.

Another example of politics and violence in the narrative is the war in Afghanistan. Darling’s cousin, TK, enlists and goes to fight in the war. She sees snippets of the war on television and mentions Uncle Kojo, whom she refers to as Vasco da Gama now because he travels around worrying about TK, looking for his son in the faces on TV of “American boys dressed like soldiers” (282). Darling mentions the boys who are attempting to be soldiers, alluding to the fact that war is a political machine that paints boys who should be at home with their families as soldiers, as well as a machine that historically sends these same boys back home in body bags.