Book World: A familiar desecration made wrenchingly fresh
Ron Charles, The Washington Post
March 16, 2021
FacebookTwitterEmail
By Imbolo Mbue
- - -
In 2016, during a presidential campaign punctuated by racist alarms about immigration, Imbolo Mbue published her first novel about an African man struggling to become an American citizen. Informed by her own experience as an immigrant from Cameroon, Behold the Dreamers captured the hopes and frustrations of millions of people drawn to this country. Mbue s capacious sympathy and careful fidelity to the voices of her characters - from the extraordinarily rich to the precariously poor - made Behold the Dreamers one of the most illuminating and touching novels of the year. When it won the PEN/Faulkner prize, Mbue s success felt like a double celebration of the artistic talent of a young writer and the growing diversity of our literary canon.