Imbolo mbue biography of christopher

Now, I realize that it wasn’t just curiosity that drew me to the revolutionaries and rebels and renegades. What truly drew them to me was the fact that they were doing something inom wished inom could do but couldn’t because it was virtually nonexistent around me: they were standing up to power.

As early as inom can recall, I was aware of the use and abuse of power all around me. inom was perplexed by the power humans have over each other, and the unabashed display of human superiority. Why do the powerful so often trample on the powerless? Why are some people so at peace with accepting their powerlessness? Why are societies separated between the powerful and the powerless?

The dominant currency of power in my hometown, as in much of the world, was wealth. Patriarchal as our society was, a wealthy woman was still more powerful than a poor man. The upper class’s dominance over the lower class was blatant; no rules existed to skydda the poor— a wealthy person could treat his or her empl

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As I was reading this book, something kept niggling in the back of my mind. It reminded me of something else I had read, but I couldn't quite bring it forward. But finally, it came to me; it was The Constant Gardener by John le Carré. That book detailed the exploitation of an African country and its population by a pharmaceutical company. This present book details exploitation by an oil company. Different kinds of companies but the lack of regard for humanity was something I found quite similar.

The country in this book is never actually named. The author was born in Cameroon and grew up in a coastal town in that country but later went to college in the United States and is now an American citizen living in New York. Though she doesn't name the country, the fictional village she writes about is called Kosawa. In that village lives a young girl named Thula and her family. It is through Thula that we experience the traumatic events affecting her village.

An American o

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A wonder to behold

Imbolo Mbue made headlines in the publishing world a couple years ago, when Random House snapped up her debut novel The Longings of Jende Jonga with a million-dollar pre-emptive bid. Mbue, a former market researcher left unemployed after the 2008 crash, had written the story of an African immigrant (like her, a native of Cameroon living in New York), who takes a job as a chauffeur for a Lehman Brothers executive in the year before that company’s devastating collapse.

By the time the book hit US shelves last August, it had a new name: Behold the Dreamers. I couldn’t help being cynical about the change in title. I pictured Random House’s marketing people cringing at the thought of foisting a name like Jende Jonga (the novel’s main character) on the reading public. Forget that the president for the previous seven-plus years had an African name – it would be just like a skittish, play-it-safe publisher to assume the worst about readers’ tastes. Of course they’d