Bulawayo's We Need New Names engages with underprivileged postcolonial cosmopolitans in its articulation of a vision that is essentially tragic. The novel compels us to contemplate how Africa has been and can be represented in order to get the attention of a hegemonic Western audience. My discussion also explores the ways in which Bulawayo negotiates some of the un...

This response to Vambe's paper is partly inspired by Macaphulana (“New Zimbabwe” 25 February, 2013), a newspaper columnist who refers to Vambe's article as ‘scholarship of grudge’ (2012). Macaphulana is angered by what he perceives as shocking scholarship that characterises Vambe's article. However, Macaphulana is wrong to attribute this to some grudge that Vambe m...