NoViolet Bulawayo – The Writer Who Ventures Where Others Fear To Tread

NoViolet Bulawayo – Author – Novelist and John’s Lecturer In Fiction At Stanford University, USA

By Tapfuma Machakaire

TO any first time reader of the literary works of NoViolet Bulawayo, one of Zimbabwe’s greatest female authors, the writer’s name will always be a subject of intrigue.

More often than not, readers question the origins of the author’s strange and unique name.

NoViolet Bulawayo is a pen name and the author was born Elizabeth Zandile Tshele. She is originally from the remote Tsholotsho district in Matabeleland North Province of Zimbabwe. Her mother was Violet who died when baby Elizabeth was just 18 months old.

As she developed her writing skills at college, Elizabeth decided to honour her late mother by adopting the pen name NoViolet. “No” means “With” in the local Sindebele language. The author’s first literary translates to “With Violet” and her surname Bulawayo is taken from Zimbabwe’s second capital which is the biggest in the region where her parents came from.

In her second book, Glory, Bulawayo unpacks events around Zimbabwe’s Operation Restore legacy of November 2017, which saw the ouster of the then 95 year old leader, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who had ruled the country from independence in 1980.

Bulawayo literally takes the bull by the horns when she ventured into territory that many would not delve into by writing about one of the most sophisticated political/military operations in African history.

Her creativity and courage which shapes her unique style of writing is probably inspired by her upbringing indicative of her choice of her pen name.

Apart from media coverage of events of the sophisticated operation, the only other credible account of the event also described “a-coup-not-a-coup” is the book Two Weeks in November by Douglas Rogers.

For her rigorous satire in the novel Glory, Bulawayo has been shortlisted among 13 authors for the prestigious 2022 Book Prize for fiction. Other nominees for this year include American writers Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Strout and Leila Mottley.

In Glory, Bulawayo was inspired by George Orwell’s 1945 classic novel Animal Farm in her approach. She animalised the characters in Operation Restore Legacy. Bulawayo created characters that include horses, pigs, dogs, cows, cats, chickens, crocodiles, birds and butterflies to embody the key actors in the November 2017 drama.

In a review of the novel journalist, Tinashe Mushakavanhu says Bulawayo’s writing is distinctive. “There is a lyricism to her prose, a poetics of language that mesmerises and surprises. This gives her fiction an applied, intense focus. Mushakavanhu says by refusing to limit her language, “Bulawayo shows the shallowness and historical ignorance behind political power in her utopian African country.” “Bulawayo also knows how to use language to good effect by deploying irony and comedy. Her use of humour in the novel is a form of political resistance that splinters the make-believe world of an out-of-touch political class.”

Born on October 12, 1981, Elizabeth Zandile Tshele went to Njube High School and later Mzilikazi High School for her A-levels. She completed her college education in the US, studying at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, and earning bachelor’s degree from A&M University, and a masters from Southern Methodist University respectively. In 2010, she completed a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Cornell University, where her work was recognized with a Truman Capote Fellowship.

In 2011 Bulawayo won the Caine Prize with her story “Hitting Budapest”, which had been published in the November/December 2010 issue of the Boston Review and became the opening chapter of her 2013 debut novel. We Need New Names.

The novel which was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize made Bulawayo the first black African woman and the first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the prize.

We Need New Names centres on a 10-year old girl, Darling and her friends from Zimbabwe. It juxtaposes the challenges and expectations of young people in both the developing and developed nations.

When she moves to the United States of America, Darling faces violence, cultural misunderstandings and homesickness. She is forced to settle for a version of America that is a far cry from her dream.

Bulawayo tackles heavier topics that include incest/rape, murder, suicide, AIDS, and displacement. Although she at times uses humour in handling such complex topics, Bulawayo displays maturity that displays a high degree of appreciation of the adverse effects of these social ills.