NoViolet Bulawayo



NoViolet Bulawayo is the pen name of Elizabeth Zandile Tshele (born 12 October 1981), a Zimbabwean author and Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (2012–14). Bulawayo was cited as one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2014.

Quotes

 * “When things fall apart, the children of the land scurry and scatter like birds escaping a burning sky.”

We Need New Names (2013)

 * "I am starting to talk fast now, and I have to remember to slow down because when I get excited, I start to sound like myself and my American accent goes away."
 * "As for the coldness, I have never seen it like this. I mean, coldness that makes like it wants to kill you, like it's telling you, with its snow, that you should go back to where you came from."
 * “The problem with English is this: You usually can't open your mouth and it comes out just like that--first you have to think what you want to say. Then you have to find the words. Then you have to carefully arrange those words in your head. Then you have to say the words quietly to yourself, to make sure you got them okay. And finally, the last step, which is to say the words out loud and have them sound just right.”
 * From her book we need new names.
 * “There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that.”
 * From her book we need new names.
 * “As for the coldness, I have never seen it like this. I mean, coldness that makes like it wants to kill you, like it's telling you, with its snow, that you should go back to where you came from.”
 * From her book we need new names.
 * “Further and further we go, and the sun keeps ironing us and ironing us and ironing us.”
 * “Aunt Fostalina says when she first came to America she went to school during the day and worked nights at Eliot’s hotels, cleaning hotel rooms together with people from countries like Senegal, Cameroon, Tibet, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and so on. It was like the damn United Nations there, she likes to say.”
 * Tags emigration, illegal -immigration, united nations from her book we need new names.
 * “...and the women spread their ntsaroz and sit on one side, the men on the other, like they are two different rivers that are not supposed to meet.”
 * Tags gender and poetic from her book we need new names.
 * “Now when the men talk, their voices burn in the air, making smoke all over the place. We hear about change, about new country, about democracy, about elections and what-what.

They talk and talk, the men, lick their lips and look at the dead watches on their wrists and shake their hands and slap each other and laugh like they have swallowed thunder.”
 * “If Messenger would be to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound.”
 * “We're hungry but we're together and we're at home and everything is sweeter than dessert.”
 * Tags african-authors, african-literature, literary, zimbabwe from her book we need new names.
 * “I think the reason they are my relatives now is they are from my country too - it's like the country has become a real family since we are in America, which is not our country.”
 * From her book we need new names.
 * “If Messenger would be to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound.”
 * From her book we need new names.
 * “I used to be very afraid of graveyards and death and such things, but not anymore. There is just no sense of being afraid when you live so near the graves; it would be like the tongue fearing the teeth.”

Quotes about NoViolet Bulawayo

 * NoViolet Bulawayo has created a world that lives and breathes – and fights, kicks, screams, and scratches, too. She has clothed it in words and given it a voice at once dissonant and melodic, utterly distinct."
 * Aminatta Forna, author of The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones
 * "Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same."
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