This blog post is not a book review, but it is based upon a novel that I first learned about from Thinking Friend Anton Jacobs. The book in question is How Beautiful We Were (2020) by Imbolo Mbue.
Author Imbolo Mbue was born in
Cameroon (in 1981), educated in the U.S.,
and became an American citizen in 2014. She now lives in New York
City with her husband and children.
Mbue’s debut novel is the
award-winning Behold the Dreamers (2016) and was selected by Oprah for
her book club. I am currently reading that intriguing book.
But soon after learning about How
Beautiful We Were, I was able to check it out on Kindle from my local
library and to read it in a few days. It is the poignant story of the people
who live in Kosawa, a small village in a fictional African country.
On July 28 (see
here), Anton cited what Yaya, the old grandmother,
said about Christian missionaries who had come to that part of Africa when she
was a little girl. She was troubled by what the missionaries said—and even
though I was a missionary for 38 years, I found their talk troubling also.
But Mbue’s book is not
anti-Christian. In fact, in “Acknowledgments” at the end of the book, she
thanks her aunt “for making me go to Bethel Baptist Church, Kumba”—and says that
“that led me to become the person of faith I am today” (p. 364).
The pivotal issue of How Beautiful We Were is
corporate greed, which caused a severe environmental crisis in Kosawa and
the surrounding area. Paxton, an American petroleum corporation, began working
in that region, and their oil drilling operation led to massive pollution of
the land and water.
An increasing number of children in Kosawa die from
pollution-caused disease, and the once peaceful life of the Kosawa villagers is
increasingly thrown into disarray.
The main struggle against Paxton is led by Thula, the most
precocious child in Kosawa, who ends up spending years getting an education in
the U.S. before returning to Kosawa to continue the fight against Paxton. There
are often signs of apparent improvement, but the struggle ends tragically.
The novel begins in 1980 and
concludes in 2020, the village of Kosawa gone, the descendants mostly working
for Paxton in Africa or even in the United States. The older people still left
in their native country woefully say,
Sometimes we ask our children about the cars they drive. The cars seem to be bigger than they’ve ever been, needing more oil. Do they think about it, about the children who will suffer as we once did just so they can have all the oil they want? (p. 358).
“Progress” seems inevitable when considering industrialism
or capitalism. Rather than people maintaining their traditional way
of life, the lure of money to buy those things that make life easier and,
supposedly, more enjoyable is irresistible. And corporate greed is insatiable.
But as I have already written repeatedly this year, such
“progress” leads to overshoot and the inevitability of the collapse of the world as
we know it. As Thinking Friend David Nelson remarked earlier this week,
“Uncontrolled capitalism is cancerous.” That is a primary reason collapse is
inevitable.
When the collapse will come is not known, and action taken
now can either hasten or delay the collapse. For example, the Inflation Reduction
Act signed by Pres. Biden on Aug. 16 happily postpones the inevitable—but it
does not remove the inevitability.
Someone anonymously posted (on Aug. 10) this comment on my
blogsite: “We are always looking for an alternative to the only true solution—a
radical change in how we consume everything—by consuming far, far less.”
I think that is certainly true—but highly unlikely to
happen. The desire for upward mobility, which includes greater consumption, is boundless;
the willingness to embrace downward mobility is rare—in spite of Henri Nouwen’s
correct insistence that it is “the selfless way of Christ.”**
Sadly, as Jesus declared, “small is the gate and narrow
the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:14, NIV)
_____
** See Nouwen’s The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward
Mobility and the Spiritual Life (2007). I last read that book in Jan. 2021,
noting that it is “a small but quite profound book that could/should be read
often.”
