How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

One angry woman did everything, and she failed.~from How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

I read Imbolo Mbue's first novel Behold the Dreamers as a galley and for book club. I jumped at the chance to read her second novel, How Beautiful We Were. 

Was money so important that they would sell children to strangers seeking oil?~from How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

The novel is about an African village struggling for environmental justice, powerless, caught between an American oil company and a corrupt dictatorship government. 

They are a proud people, connected to the land of their ancestors. They have lived simple, subsistence lives, full of blessings. Until the oil company ruined their water, their land, their air. A generation of children watch their peers dying from poisoned water. Their pleas for help are in vain. 

School-aged Thula is inspired by books, including The Communist Manifesto, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and The Wretched of the Earth. "They were her closest friends," spurring her into activist causes when she goes to America to study. In America and becomes an activist. Meanwhile, her peers in her home village lose faith in the process and take up terrorism. 

How could we have been so reckless as to dream?~from How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

The fictional village, its inhabitants and history, is so well drawn I could believe it taken from life. The viewpoint shifts among the characters.

We wondered if America was populated with cheerful people like that overseer, which made it hard for us to understand them: How could they be happy when we were dying for their sake?~from How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

The fate of the village and its country are an indictment to Western colonialism and capitalism. Slaves, rubber, oil--people came and exploited Africa for gain. The village loses their traditions and ancestral place as their children become educated and take jobs with Western corporations and the government.

This story must be told, it might not feel good to all ears, it gives our mouths no joy to sat it, but our story cannot be left untold.~from How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

This is not an easy book for an American to read. It reminds us of the many ways our country has failed and continues to fail short of the ideal we hope it is. And not just abroad--we have failed our to protect our children here in America.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

How Beautiful We Were
by Imbolo Mbue
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 9780593132425
hard cover $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher:

We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.

Told from the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold on to its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.

How Beautiful We Were by Mbolo Mbue

One angry woman did everything, and she failed.~from How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

I read Imbolo Mbue's first novel Behold the Dreamers as a galley and for book club. I jumped at the chance to read her second novel, How Beautiful We Were. 

Was money so important that they would sell children to strangers seeking oil?~from How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

The novel is about an African village struggling for environmental justice, powerless, caught between an American oil company and a corrupt dictatorship government. 

They are a proud people, connected to the land of their ancestors. They have lived simple, subsistence lives, full of blessings. Until the oil company ruined their water, their land, their air. A generation of children watch their peers dying from poisoned water. Their pleas for help are in vain. 

School-aged Thula is inspired by books, including The Communist Manifesto, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and The Wretched of the Earth. "They were her closest friends," spurring her into activist causes when she goes to America to study. In America and becomes an activist. Meanwhile, her peers in her home village lose faith in the process and take up terrorism. 

How could we have been so reckless as to dream?~from How Beautiful We Were by Mbolo Mbue

The fictional village, its inhabitants and history, is so well drawn I could believe it taken from life. The viewpoint shifts among the characters.

We wondered if America was populated with cheerful people like that overseer, which made it hard for us to understand them: How could they be happy when we were dying for their sake?~from How Beautiful We Were by Mbolo Mbue

The fate of the village and its country are an indictment to Western colonialism and capitalism. Slaves, rubber, oil--people came and exploited Africa for gain. The village loses their traditions and ancestral place as their children become educated and take jobs with Western corporations and the government.

This story must be told, it might not feel good to all ears, it gives our mouths no joy to sat it, but our story cannot be left untold.~from How Beautiful We Were by Mbolo Mbue

This is not an easy book for an American to read. It reminds us of the many ways our country has failed and continues to fail short of the ideal we hope it is. And not just abroad--we have failed our to protect our children here in America.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher:

We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.

Told from the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold on to its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.

How Beautiful We Were
by Imbolo Mbue
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date: March 9, 2021
ISBN: 9780593132425
hard cover $28.00 (USD)

Little Family by Ishmael Beah

Khoudi was invisible in her beanie and boy's clothes. Elimane was the intellectual, always with a book, his past life a secret; he is also street-smart, a hustler. Young Namsa suffers sleep terrors rooted in some unspoken past while Khoudi watches over her. Ndevui and Kpindi play marbles for ganja.

These bright young people have been dealt horrible blows. They have banded together as a little family to survive life on the streets. They know how to blend into the crowd, tag along with a family to pass, and pocket food which they share at their secret hideout.

This makeshift family will break your heart.

Through these characters, Ishmael Beah's novel Little Family paints a picture of the social and economic disparity in an African country..

Eliname assists a stranger who then employs him and the family for undercover operations. The money they earn changes their lives.

Khoudi is a beautiful girl blossoming into womanhood. She uses her money at a hair salon and steals clothes from the beach. Self-contained and independent, her beauty attracts the attention of a wealthy girl who unknowingly helps her pass into the upper echelons of society.

A line had been crossed. Something had come to an end.~ from Little Family by Ishmael Beah

Survival comes at a cost. Feelings make you weak. When the family allows jealousy in, a series of events destroys the family and Khoudi's fantasy of a different life.

The setting is specific and foreign, full of local color, the exotic foods and the red caps daily inventing another "exercise in dehumanization."

Yet this is a story that is repeated across the world, in every city. How many children are unprotected, how many fine minds are untapped, what beauty lies hidden beneath rags? Every state holds these lost children.

I will be haunted by this little family.

I received a free book through Goodreads. My review is fair and unbiased.

About the author:

Ishmael Beah is the Sierra Leonean and American author of the novel Radiance of Tomorrow and the memoir A Long Way Gone, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller and has been published in more than forty languages. A UNICEF Ambassador and Advocate for Children Affected by War, and a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Advisory Committee, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their children.

Little Family
Ishmael Beah
Riverhead Books
Publication Date April 28, 2020
$27 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1177-3

Victim or Opportunist? Beryl Markham's Remarkable Life

Biographical fiction is an interesting genre consisting of one person's imagined probing into the lives of real people. The incidents and dialogue, the reflections of the characters, their emotional life revealed in the work, are not to be considered "truth" but interpretation.

I have been reading many of the NetGalley biographical fiction books about writers and historical figures. There have been so many of them available! The genre has grown wildly over the last decade.

Circling the Sun by Paula McClain will be a best seller. Her previous novel The Paris Wife was well received. The novel is written in the first person voice of Beryl Markham, who was raised in Africa and was the first female horse trainer and the first aviatrix to cross the Atlantic. She was friends with Karen Blixen (Isak Dineson) and her lover Denys Hatten Finch--who was also involved with Beryl.

I enjoyed reading about Beryl's childhood in Africa. Her family left Britain for Kenya where her father farmed and trained horses. The family split when Beryl was four years old. Her mother and brother returning to England, leaving Beryl with her father. She grew up in exquisite freedom, hanging with the natives, unschooled, unkempt. Beryl's first language was Swahili. She learned to hunt with the local native boys. She dealt with a lion attack.

As Beryl came into her middle teens British expat social pressure prevailed; she "came out" and met their neighbor, an alcoholic war veteran who decided to marry her. And at age 17 she married Jock Purvis. It didn't work out. McClain's Purvis is overly sensitive and has little patience to teach Beryl how to be a wife.

She is 18 when she leaves Purvis. Determined to be self supporting she trains to become the first women horse trainer. She becomes involved in a 'friends with benefits relationship', and then falls in love with Denys who is with the married Blixen. She and Denys snatch moments together.

Beryl finds herself pregnant and goes to England to seek help. A friend finds her a "protector" who will pay for an abortion with the expectation that Beryl will be his mistress. Still married to Purvis and in love with Denys, totally without means of self support, she acquiesces. Sadly her new duties include wife swapping.

Her later marriage to Mansfield Markham was also a failure. He kept their child and sent Beryl packing.

McClain's portrayal of Beryl as victim was interesting. Her inability to form lasting relationships could be interpreted as a natural outcome of her mother's abandonment and her father's willingness to marry her off ASAP.

Here we are half way through the story and you see where things are going. Beryl can't make a good decision, she has little power over her own life, and men rule the world. This is not the Beryl I expected to read about: The convention-defying, pioneering spirit with a masculine independence who didn't believe in boundaries. Reading about Beryl online she appears more self-determined. She is quoted as saying she had causal sex with numerous men because there was nothing much else to do out in the bush. And yet she is supposed to have rejected the advances of Ernest Hemingway when they were out in the bush!

I wanted to read Beryl's book instead of McClain's. Not that McClain's book is "bad", but because I wanted to know how Beryl saw herself.

McClain's book starts and ends with Beryl flying across the Atlantic. This 1936 event, the most important achievement of Beryl's life, frames the story which is really an extended flash back over her life. That is just too bad. I would have liked to read the flight story in its entirety: Beryl remaining awake for 21 hours in a time before auto-pilot; the long cold hours flying blind; the crash landing in Nova Scotia; painfully recalling Denys's death in a plane crash. What was Beryl imagining as she plunged earthwards? What was her joy and satisfaction of surviving and finding fame? Days after her success, her flight trainer Tom Campbell Black died in a plane crash. After that she lost interest in flying.

McClain shows Beryl liked to read, including poetry. Some biographers contend that Beryl did not like to read and had no patience to write, suggesting that her memoir was actually penned by journalist husband No. 3, Raoul Schumacher. In 1942 West with the Night was published  and sold well. Then it was forgotten. When it was reprinted in 1983 it brought recognition--and much needed income--to the aging and impoverished Beryl.

Circling the Sun is an enjoyable read. Today's women will like this softened version of Beryl.

To learn more about Beryl Markham:
http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-many-lives-of-beryl-markham.html
http://www.adventure-journal.com/2013/04/historical-badass-aviator-beryl-markham/
http://clutterbuck.blogspot.com/2005/02/beryl-clutterbuck.html

I thank the publisher for a free ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Circling the Sun
Paula McClain
Random House-Ballantine
$28 hard cover
Publication Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 9780345534187

+++++

An interesting article on the genre by Slate Magazine states,"...a flood of what amounts to biographical fan fiction has swept conventional literary biography out of the way." Talking about Vanessa and Her Sister, which I reviewed last year, the article suggests that the difference between biography and novels is that the novelist can "sift and sort through evidence to make a character out of the remains of a person. But only novelists get to throw out everything that doesn't fit."