From Africa to America: Precarious Belongings in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names.

De África a América: filiaciones precarias en We Need New Names, de NoViolet Bulawayo.

ADICHIE, Chimamanda Ngozi, 1977-; BULAWAYO, NoViolet, 1981-

This article analyzes NoViolet Bulawayo's critically acclaimed debut novel We Need New Names (2013), bringing to the fore the legacies of colonialism and the subsequent diaspora to the West. Like the work of other contemporary Afrodiasporic writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Taiye Selasi and Imbolo Mbue, Bulawayo's narrative recreates the problematic space of dislocated, transnational migrants who are attached to a postcolonial and a metropolitan "home," and denied fundamental rights in both. Unstable belongings are part of the new subjectivities forged in postcolonial contexts, where invisibility is also a social, political and economic sign of precarity. In Bulawayo's novel, social conflicts, abusive governments, linguistic imposition, displacement and migration are revealed through a group of African children, first in a Zimbabwean shantytown and then in the United States. This study contextualizes the diasporic dilemmas of belonging and identity formation, while at the same time exploring the possibilities of political agency within contemporary Afrodiasporic literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este artículo analiza la aclamada primera novela de NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names (2013), subrayando los legados de la colonización y la diáspora hacia países occidentales. De igual forma que otras escritoras afrodiaspóricas contemporáneas, tales como Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Taiye Selasi y Imbolo Mbue, la novela de Bulawayo reconstruye el complejo espacio que habitan las personas migrantes y transnacionales, vinculadas a un hogar poscolonial y a otro metropolitano, en los que se les niegan derechos fundamentales. Las subjetividades que emergen en contextos poscoloniales se caracterizan por sus filiaciones inestables, además de la frecuente invisibilidad social, política y económica. En la obra de Bulawayo, las peripecias de un grupo de niños y niñas africanas revelan los conflictos sociales, el abuso gubernamental, la imposición lingüística, el desplazamiento y la migración, primero en un barrio marginal de Zimbabue y después en Estados Unidos. El presente estudio contextualiza los dilemas de identidad y pertenencia en la diáspora, además de explorar las posibilidades de agencia política en la literatura afrodiaspórica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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