The Displacement Experience: Exploring Diaspora in We Need New Names through a Cultural Studies Lens

Document Type : Research Papers/Extracts from dissertations

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1 Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Helwan University

2 Helwan University - Faculty of Arts - English Department - Cairo - EgyptSamiaS

Abstract

Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, a Zimbabwean author, writes under the pen name NoViolet Bulawayo. She was born in 1981 and was raised in Zimbabwe before attending college in the United States. Her short story Hitting Budapest won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2011. NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel We Need New Names (2014) explores the concepts of diaspora, nostalgia, and how migrants feel about leaving their homeland. Diaspora theory examines the experiences of diasporic communities, which is a subfield of cultural studies. It also investigates how diasporic communities interact with their host country, and how this connection shapes their culture. Meanwhile, cultural studies theory investigates how various social, economic, and political variables shape culture. Cultural Studies provide a good framework for analyzing We Need New Names’ theme of diaspora. This paper tackles the complicated ways in which culture and society impact the lives of refugees and migrants by evaluating the novel's representation, regulation, globalization, and counter-memory.

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