Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue review – an impressive debut

This is not a story of noble immigrants versus the evil banking class: it is about people who have no room to manoeuvre So charged has the word “migrant” become that I hesitate to call Imbolo Mbue’s impressive debut a migrant novel; yet all the ingredients are there. The protagonist Jende Jonga is, like Mbue, […]

This is not a story of noble immigrants versus the evil banking class: it is about people who have no room to manoeuvre

So charged has the word “migrant” become that I hesitate to call Imbolo Mbue’s impressive debut a migrant novel; yet all the ingredients are there. The protagonist Jende Jonga is, like Mbue, a Cameroonian migrant to America along with his wife Neni and their six-year old son Liomi. And Clark Edwards, Jende’s boss, an investment banker, is also a migrant, coming to Wall Street from the American hinterland; his ancestors were once newcomers with funny accents and funnier customs.

The novel begins with an interview. Clark needs a driver and Jende needs a job. In this opening exchange, power, the central theme of the novel, is laid bare. For Clark, the interview is a blip in his busy day. To Jende, in his carefully chosen clothes and with his carefully doctored CV, it is the only way to sustain life for him and his family.

Yet Jende is not the naïf he appears, despite his gauche green suit and wide-eyed reaction to office furniture. If the American immigration system is a powerful machine, those trapped inside it are not entirely powerless. The system can be played. Along with his immigration lawyer, Jende has decided to seek asylum and concoct a tale to go with his application, complete with a father-in-law who is trying to kill him.

While Jende is waiting for the result of his asylum application, he settles self-effacingly into his job, offering up stories of his homeland for his boss’s amusement (“Limbe is very special, Mr Edwards. In Limbe, we live simple lives, but we enjoy our lives well’). Jende is a small man at work, at the beck and call of Clark, his wife Cindy and their two sons; but he is a big man at home. The humiliations of being a driver allow him to pay his wife’s college tuition and send money back to Cameroon.

But it is 2008 and Clark works for Lehman Brothers. Clark too is trapped in a powerful system, this time a financial one, and there is little room for manoeuvre. The reader foresees the gathering storm but is powerless to stop it.

This is not a story of noble immigrants versus the evil banking class: Mbue is too skilful for that. The Edwardses are self-absorbed and selfish but slim bridges of genuine affection exist between them and the Jongas. On the other hand, the Jongas are not simple Africans who eschew materialism and can teach the Edwardses how to live a contented life. Both Jende and Neni rejoice in the consumerism of America and grasp at all that capitalism has to offer.

Sometimes, the pace becomes sluggish as yet another set piece scene of cultural exchange occurs. In one episode, the reader laughs at Jende’s expense as he ponders over the phrase “cooked books”. In another, Jende tells the Edwardses older son that in Cameroon he would be whipped by his parents for wanting to quit law school.

Mbue’s prose is mostly straightforward and unadorned but her characters are complex, with contradictory motivations, which provide the story with depth and quiet power.

The novel was called The Longings of Jende Jonga when it sold for seven figures. There’s a jaunty catchiness to this discarded title, yet Behold the Dreamers is a more fitting name. Who are the dreamers? Jende and Neni, who believe that through hard work and luck they can force their way into the American dream? Or we, the readers, who close our eyes to the Jendes in our midst, lulling ourselves into inertia with dreams of peace and security?

• Chibundu Onuzo’s Welcome to Lagos is published by Faber.

Behold the Dreamers is published by 4th Estate. 

Source: theguardian.com