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Book of the Quarter

We Need New Names, Winter 2015

Winter 2015

Thursday, February 26
4 - 5:30 p.m.
Saint Clare Room, 3rd Floor
Learning Commons, Technology Center, and Library

In collaboration with Silicon Valley Reads, the University Library is pleased to feature NoViolet Bulawayo, author of We Need New Names, for the Winter Book of the Quarter. Bulawayo will discuss her book with Harry Odamtten, assistant professor in the history department, and will be available to answer questions from faculty, staff, and students. A limited supply of books are available in the campus bookstore for purchase.

About the Book

Ten-year-old Darling and her friends navigate their shantytown with the exuberance and mischievous spirit of children everywhere. But they are shadowed by memories of Before - before their homes were destroyed by paramilitary policemen, before the schools closed, before their fathers left for dangerous jobs abroad. When Darling escapes to suburban America, she finds that - far from the comforts of her childhood community - America's abundance is hard to reach, and she reckons alone with the sacrifices and mixed rewards of assimilating.

About the Author

NoViolet Bulawayo is the author of We Need New Names (May 2013) which has been recognized with the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, the Barnes and Noble Discover Award (2nd place), and as a National Book Foundation 2013 "5 Under 35" honoree. We Need New Names was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award, and selected to The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2013 list, the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers list, and others. Bulawayo's story "Hitting Budapest" won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing.

Bulawayo earned her MFA at Cornell University where she was a recipient of the Truman Capote Literary Trust Fellowship. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where she now teaches as a Jones Lecturer in Fiction. Bulawayo grew up in Zimbabwe.

Oct 13, 2015
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