The author reveals the poverty of her country or rather her community through her childhood memories.

It is noteworthy that some scholars believe that the depiction of life in Zimbabwe is rather dramatized for marketing purposes (Ndlovu 133).Įven if some exaggerations are present, the narration is still rather realistic. Darling shares her memories concerning her childhood years in Zimbabwe with a great emphasis on the poverty that reigned in her neighborhood. The protagonists’ feelings and thoughts are central to the narrative, and these ideas revolve around such issues as financial security, relationships with other people, and satisfaction of different needs. In their adulthood, Darling and Jo live in post-democratic societies, which places their self-actualization agenda far from the political domain. One of the similarities in the protagonists’ acceptance of the established norms and rules, as well as their focus on their personal issues.

The novel Mullumbimby by Melissa Lucashenko dwells upon an Indigenous woman living in Australia, Jo Breen, who works hard to buy some land, which will enable her to improve her life.Īlthough these novels depict life on different continents, they have much in common. Her childhood and adolescent years were rather hard as her family lived in poverty, so the girl had to steal fruit from a neighborhood where well-off people lived. In her book We Need New Names, NoViolet Bulawayo narrates about Darling, a girl living in Zimbabwe, who later comes to the USA. The two novels are two accounts of females pertaining to underprivileged groups. The contemporary novel is a representation of this trend, which will be discussed in this paper based on the novels by Melissa Lucashenko and NoViolet Bulawayo. Individuals are ready and sometimes willing to pass any authority they could have in order to enjoy the right to meet their needs. However, the twenty-first century is witnessing another trend as postmodern people living in post-democratic societies are less concerned about political aspects but concentrate on their lives and their development. The political struggle of that period and the development of democracies could not but affect authors and their literary works that explored political issues that existed or were emerging.

Mullumbimby by melissa lucashenko