‘Behold the Dreamers’: The one novel Donald Trump should read now

Sometimes, a novel arrives at just the right moment.

Here we are in a crater of xenophobia. One of our presidential candidates is foaming at the mouth about “extreme vetting” for immigrants. But then along comes “Behold the Dreamers,” a debut novel by a young woman from Cameroon that illuminates the immigrant experience in America with the tenderhearted wisdom so lacking in our political discourse. While another author might have played that imperative title sarcastically, for Imbolo Mbue, “Behold the Dreamers” is a kind of angelic annunciation of hope, which ultimately makes her story even more poignant.

Imbolo Mbue Tracks the 2008 Crisis Through Immigrant Eyes

Imbolo Mbue’s debut novel, ‘Behold the Dreamers’ follows how the fallout from the financial crisis hits two families

Newly American 'Dreamers' Are Torn Between Love And Disappointment

Behold the Dreamers is a remarkable debut. Mbue is a wonderful writer with an uncanny ear for dialogue — there are no false notes here, no narrative shortcuts, and certainly no manufactured happy endings. It's a novel that depicts a country both blessed and doomed, on top of the world, but always at risk of losing its balance. It is, in other words, quintessentially American.

The American Dream deferred in ‘Behold the Dreamers’

Characters lie to each other and force others into lies, and Lehman lies to the entire nation about the ultimately self-destructive financial machinations that are helping poor immigrants, among others, buy homes — a symbol at the heart of the golden promise that is America. At once critical and hopeful, “Behold the Dreamers’’ traces the political and economic systems that push individuals toward dishonesty, while also acknowledging the bad and affirming the good in their complicated personal choices.

An Expertly Wrought, Wholly Unique and Sorely Needed Masterpiece

This debut is entirely unique, poignant and striking. It’s simply excellent fiction, with a tight plot that avoids convention and always surprises, and characters and dynamics that breathe right off the page. This is a refreshing, phenomenal and crucial work, and I eagerly anticipate further greatness from Imbolo Mbue.

An Immigrant Family Encounter the 1 Percent in a Debut Novel

Mbue writes with great confidence and warmth, effortlessly inhabiting the minds of both Jende and his wife. Neni, balancing motherhood and her dreams of becoming a pharmacist, is particularly appealing; she thrums on the page, full of complexity and yearning.

New Books by Imbolo Mbue, Krys Lee, Gonzalo Torne and Lisa McInerney

As a dissection of the American dream, Imbolo Mbue's first novel is savage and compassionate in all the right places...Just as you think the author has served up a rather predictable set of characters (callous rich guy, pill-popping wife, virtuous immigrants), she slyly complicates them. In one scene, after Neni learns that her family's existence in America has been threatened, her ruthless gambit to protect them is awe-inspiring.

'Behold the Dreamers' reads as modern 'Grapes of Wrath'

Perhaps there are no clear antagonists among the two families because instead they face a common, invisible foe: the elusive American dream. For each character must grapple with what that dream is and whether the cost of chasing it is too high.

Their reckoning delivers us a witty, compassionate, swiftly paced novel that takes on race, immigration, family and the dangers of capitalist excess. In her debut novel, Mbue has crafted a compelling view of 21st-century America.

Le rêve américain d'Imbolo Mbue

Tel est le tour de force du premier roman d'Imbolo Mbue: convoquer plusieurs traditions du roman new-yorkais pour mieux le renouveler.

IMBOLO MBUE: Chasing the American dream (interview)

What does it mean to pursue the American dream in the 21st century? Writer Imbolo Mbue traces the lives of two very different couples in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 in her insightful debut. We asked her a few questions about her own experience moving to America from Cameroon, her love for New York City and who she’d like to see play her characters on screen.

Imbolo Mbue : un premier roman phénomène

"Voici venir les rêveurs" (Belfond) a été acheté un million de dollars aux États-Unis. De passage à Paris, l'auteur d'origine camerounaise raconte ce qui n'est pas un rêve !

Imbolo Mbue Rêveuse, les pieds sur terre

Imbolo Mbue ponctue ses phrases de grands éclats de rire et élude les questions sur l’incroyable succès commercial de son livre : « Mon agent s’occupe du business, je me contente d’écrire, résume-t-elle. C’est un privilège de pouvoir intéresser le public en écrivant sur des gens qui me ressemblent, sur la classe ouvrière, les immigrés camerounais. » 

Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers Reinvents the Classic Immigrant Story

Imbolo Mbue opens Behold the Dreamers with a quote from Deuteronomy in which Moses speaks of a future arrival in “a good land” abundant with food and wealth. Mbue places this archetypal story of migration at the heart of her novel so that she could reinvent the way we tell stories of how people move about in the world—in particular a globalized world—and the notions of the future that drive them.

A Review of the BEHOLD THE DREAMERS Audio Book

BEHOLD THE DREAMERS | Read by Prentice Onayemi | 12.25 hrs • © 2016

Narrator Prentice Onayemi invigorates the listener with a steady pace and musical intonation as two families come together in Manhattan--one at the peak of socioeconomic success and one at the bottom. Onayemi's distinctive accents ensure that the listener can differentiate between the the African immigrants and the American characters featured in this story of the American dream.

Imbolo Mbue, 33 ans et un paquet de talents

Présentée par son éditeur américain comme la prochaine Naipaul, l’Américaine d’origine camerounaise Imbolo Mbue publie son premier roman, plein de bruits et de fureur. La romancière a puisé dans son expérience d’immigrante de fraîche date aux Etats-Unis pour raconter les heurs et malheurs d’un couple de migrants qui ont quitté leur passé et leur famille dans l’espoir de réaliser le rêve américain. Mais si ce rêve n’était qu’illusion ?

«Grâce à Obama, des millions d’entre nous ont osé rêver» par Imbolo Mbue

Nous rêvions de le voir remporter l’investiture démocrate pour l’élection présidentielle de 2008, et il la remporta. Nous rêvions de le voir gagner ces élections, et il les gagna. Nous espérions qu’une fois devenu notre président, Barack Obama porte notre cause à la Maison Blanche, exauce les vœux de chacun. Peut-être aurions-nous dû voir que certains d’entre nous allaient au-devant de déceptions. Peut-être aurions-nous dû savoir qu’un seul homme ne peut pas tout incarner à la fois. Peut-être n’aurions-nous pas dû nous projeter en lui de la sorte, mais beaucoup ne voyaient pas les choses ainsi - voilà où réside la beauté de l’espoir, qui vous permet de surmonter l’impossible.

Behold the Dreamers - The Music Playlist

The songs in this playlist are a combination of songs featured in my novel, songs by musicians mentioned in the novel, as well as songs which inspired me during the writing. One of the beauties of a Cameroonian childhood in the '80s and '90s was how much we were exposed to music from all over Africa. There was a great sense of Pan-Africanism in my childhood, a belief that we were not just Cameroonians but Africans, too. We took pride in the successes and achievements of our fellow Africans, which is why some of the songs below are by musicians beloved across much of the continent. And being that my novel is about two New York City families—one Cameroonian and working class, the other American and upper class—this playlist also represents a celebration of my two very different homelands.

Turns Out The Best Stories About African Immigrants Are Written By African Immigrants

Beyond hitting all the beats of a novel of its size and style, Behold the Dreamers is full of rich details of immigrant life. Neni’s interior life is written out explicitly – she sings while she irons her husband’s shirts and applies lipstick on her way to African parties, whether they be “a naming ceremony in the Bronx” or “a death celebration in Yonkers for someone who died in Africa and whom practically none of the guests knew”. Jende takes “the last piece of plantain from the plate” and uses it “to clean the tomato sauce bowl, and rush it, together with the last piece of chicken, into his mouth”... On Christmas morning the Jongas eat fried ripe plantains and beans and exchange no gifts... Their natural references are also steeped in African imagery, most eye-catchingly when Mbue describes Jende’s internal grin as “wider than the Great Rift Valley.”

Rentrée littéraire à Paris : une saison africaine

En littérature étrangère, Voici venir les rêveurs (Belfond) d’Imbolo Mbue, également dans la sélection du prix du roman Fnac, cristallise aussi l’attention. L’annonce du premier roman de cette Camerounaise de Manhattan, âgée de 33 ans, a créé l’événement à la Foire du livre de Francfort en 2014, où s’était jouée une bataille entre les plus grands groupes éditoriaux. Au final, un million de dollars d’avance versé par l’éditeur américain Random House. Roman sur les tribulations d’une famille camerounaise qui cherche à vivre son rêve à New York, Voici venir les rêveurs paraît simultanément en France et aux Etats-Unis.

‘Behold the Dreamers’ review: Imbolo Mbue’s commanding novel of African immigrants and the American dream

Dreamers have been getting short shrift these days. Instead of visionaries, they are seen as complicit sleepwalkers. Born in Limbe, Cameroon, Mbue — a resident of the United States for more than a decade — doesn’t let her dreamers off the hook. Far from it. Nor does she ridicule their deepest hopes.

It is not the bedeviling American dream that demands our affection and understanding here. Instead, Mbue insists, it the humans who dream it.