We Need New Names Quotes
"We are going even though we are not allowed to cross Mzilikazi Road...we are just going."
"We didn’t eat this morning and my stomach feels like somebody just took a shovel and dug everything out."
"Getting out of Paradise is not so hard since the mothers are busy with hair and talk."
"When we hit the bush we are already flying, scream-singing like the wheels in our voices will make us go faster."
"A baby grows outside of the stomach, not inside. That’s the whole reason they are born. So they grow into adults."
"Just shut your kaka mouth, you, it’s not even your stomach."
"Budapest is big, big houses with satellite dishes on the roofs and neat graveled yards."
"I think it’s the kind of pretty to look at and admire and say, Oh, that’s pretty, not a pretty to live in."
"It’s like a pattern, and Bastard says this way we can be better thieves."
"I don’t care, I’m going, I say, and walk fast to catch up with Chipo and Stina."
"We keep our eyes on the woman’s mouth and wait to hear what she will say."
"I say wow too, wow wow wow, but I do it inside my head."
"She runs a hand through her hair, which is matted and looks a mess."
"I make sure I walk behind Mother of Bones when we go to church."
"Mother of Bones says the picture was taken when Father was finishing university."
"Now Father is in South Africa, working, but he never writes, never sends us money, never nothing."
"I don’t like going to church because I don’t really see why I have to sit in the hot sun on that mountain."
"If you’re stealing something it’s better if it’s small and hideable or something you can eat quickly and be done with."
"Mother of Bones has already laid out my good yellow dress, which I wouldn’t dare wear if my mother were here."
"I don’t know why Mother of Bones has the curtain in the first place since there are no real glass windows."
"Mother of Bones likes being the first in everything."
"Mother of Bones is already singing her favorite church song, the one she always sings when she makes the climb."
"Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro is wearing a brand-new robe."
"Destiny’s mother starts singing 'Blessed Are the Givers.'"
"After the singing, somebody passes a big white bowl around for offerings."
"I don’t go to school anymore because all the teachers left to teach over in South Africa and Botswana and Namibia."
"By the time we finally get to the top of Fambeki my thighs are like lead."
"God told Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro in a dream that he needed to move the church to here."
"He places his hands on her stomach, on her thighs, then he puts his hands on her thing."
"The men driving the bulldozers are laughing."
"The men knock down our house and Ncane’s house and Josephat’s house."
"Blood gushes from Mai Tari’s head and turns the policeman’s boots red-red."
"After the bulldozers finally leave, everything is broken, everything is smashed."
"By the time the adults return we are dizzy from waiting."
"Now Mother’s man is snoring; I hate people who snore because it’s an ugly sound."
"We are as quiet as graves, sad like the adults coming back from burying the dead."
"We crowd in MotherLove’s shack like sand, and it is stuffy and hot inside."
"The adults are passing the brew around, even to us, because they tell us change is coming."
"They did not come to Paradise. Coming would mean that they were choosers."
"Her voice is boiling out of her and steaming up the place."
"They appeared single file, like ants. In swarms, like flies."
"Despite the circumstances, she refused to appear like something coming undone."
"And when they returned to the presence of their women and children...they erected themselves like walls again."
"Today we’re getting rid of Chipo’s stomach once and for all."
"It’s the same thing and it isn’t. But what’s the use, we are here now."
"The children themselves appeared baffled; they did not understand what was happening to them."
"I remain standing until Mother pushes me by the back of my neck."
"We are like Goldidogs, I say from under my sheets."
"This is America, yo, you won’t see none of that African shit up in this motherfucker."
"It is a greedy monster too, the snow, because just look how it has swallowed everything."
"If you were born in my country you’d just be ordinary, your runway would be the border, where you’d just be selling things like my mother."
"I don’t even know what kind of life is this when you are all born to scatter to foreign lands in droves."
"The ancestors are your angels, they will bear you to America."
"With all this snow... this place doesn’t look like my America, doesn’t even look real."
"It’s like we are in a terrible story, like we’re in the crazy parts of the Bible."
"Even the stones know that a sky is supposed to be blue, like our sky back home."
"A sky is supposed to be blue, so blue you can spray Clorox on it and it wouldn’t even come off."
"What kind of life is this when you are all born to scatter to foreign lands in droves?"
"The cold is not like that. It’s the cold to stop life, to cut you open and blaze your bones."
"Nobody told me of this cold when I was coming here."
"We don’t mind sanctions banning us from Europe; we are not Europeans."
"English is like a huge iron door and you are always losing the keys."
"In America, roads are like the devil’s hands, like God’s love, reaching all over."
"Home before Paradise, and home in Paradise; home one and home two."
"It’s not necessary; some people are content to just talk by themselves."
"The voices of children singing Who discovered the way to India? and playing Andy-over; the mothers’ laughter rising above everything else."
"If we ever let them settle, then the whole motherland will fall, and we will be ruled by strangers."
"But no, by my father’s black cow, today it will be death or victory."
"You left the house burning and you have the guts to tell me, in that stupid accent that you were not even born with, that doesn’t even suit you, that this is your country?"