"We Need New Names" Quotes
A young girl from Zimbabwe navigates the complexities of immigration and identity in America.
fiction | 298 pages | Published in 2013
Quotes
We left our countries and our languages and our religions and our cultures and ourselves behind. We left our mothers behind, saying goodbye but not knowing what the word meant.
I don't even know how to explain this thing that happened inside me when I saw the plane go. It was as if I was going with it, as if it was going without me, as if I was already gone, as if I was still here.
The only way not to be afraid is to be the one scaring, not the one scared.
We are on our way to destroy America, which has destroyed us.
It's a country of mad people, but we are the maddest, because we have to destroy it, the country we love and hate in equal measure.
We played in the dust, and fought over nothing, and laughed and laughed.
You have to have a new name because sometimes you need to start a new life, to get away from the old one.
We need new names for the things we have become.
We were all broken; we were all changed; we were all strangers.
We made up for everything we had lost. We learned to look out for ourselves, to take care of ourselves, to say no, to fight, to steal if we had to, to fend for ourselves.





