Behold the Dreamers

“The Bakweri people of Limbe believe August is a cursed month. The rain falls too hard and for too long; rivers rise up too high and too fast. Dry days are few; chilly nights are many. The month is long, dreary, and hostile, and it is for this reason that many in the tribe do not marry, build homes, or start businesses in August. They wait for it to go away, along with its curses. Jende Jonga, a Bakweri man, believed nothing in curses.”

Behold the Dreamers, p. 355
By Imbolo Mbue
Published 2016 by Random House

Reflection: Behold the Dreamers

“The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick” is an early short story by Elizabeth Gilbert. In this story, the magician Richard Hoffman expresses frustration that his daughter, Esther, is not a natural magician herself: “She’s pretty terrible. Too dramatic. She says, Behold! It’s terrible. Behold this! Behold that!” But it is Esther who ultimately saves the day and utters the very last word of the story——”Behold”——as her father realizes that she is indeed “a most gifted young woman,” having little to do with sleight of hand.
 
I recently revisited this story only to have “behold” stuck in my head for days, during which I found every excuse to say it and even imagined conversations in which I would dramatically deploy it. On one of those days, Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers arrived at my doorstep, and you can imagine the meaning I assigned to this coincidence.
 
Behold the Dreamers (Random House, 2016) intertwines the lives of two New York City couples who represent vastly different versions of the American Dream. Clark and Cindy Edwards split their time between Manhattan and the Hamptons, a pampered life made possible by Clark’s prestigious position at Lehman Brothers. Jende and Neni Jonga live in a cramped apartment in Harlem, happy to have left their native Cameroon and desperate to build a new life in America. Jende is hired to be the Edwards’ chauffer, Neni their housekeeper, and the two become intertwined in the crumbling lives of their wealthy employers.
 
In 2008, Lehman Brothers infamously filed for bankruptcy, unleashing an eerily endless ripple effect: “All through the land, willows would weep for the end of many dreams.” Countless lives were derailed, and Behold the Dreamers is a fictional take on that moment in recent history. There is one particularly endearing scene in which Jende and Neni jump around their living room and shed tears because Barack Obama has been elected president: “The son of an African now ruled the world.”
 
Dreams do not always come true, a lesson withheld from children though one of the first learned as adults. The American Dream, one of the grandest promises of all, is particularly vulnerable to falling short because it underestimates the impact of variables often impossible to control. For example, one of the issues the book examines is immigration, as Jende and Neni are under continuous stress that they will be forced to leave the country. When Jende loses his job and deportation appears imminent, the stress is palpable, leading to dark and highly questionable actions. Neni is depressed during the entire last stretch of the story, and the ultimate decision——to stay in America or return to Cameroon——is made by Jende and does not lift her spirits.
 
Of course, the ultimate lesson is not that it is futile to dream. Rather, that if you persevere, a dream will continuously remake itself, mold itself to the conditions it encounters, and become real in a way one could not have even imagined. Perhaps such unpredictability is what keeps the magic in tact. Hence, behold the dreamers!

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Behold the Dreamers
By Imbolo Mbue
Published 2016 by Random House

Note: Summer

Summer leaps above the rest of the year, much like the holidays, a brief period of entirely unique rituals. Perhaps long summer days are to be appreciated, but I’ve never appreciated when things linger, be it days or guests or feelings.
 
I’ve traveled up and down California throughout the season, driving alongside sunflowers that bravely line the highways, the wild kind whose tiny heads branch out in all directions. In Lake Tahoe, tall pines swayed until they creaked, like a house near collapse, and in the southern Sierra Nevada, stars appeared and I counted four, nine, and then sixteen before they flooded the sky and the counting proved futile. The photo above was taken in Joshua Tree, where in that very same dress I ran at full speed among the giant boulders because at 6 a.m. there is not a soul in sight, and thus every reason to do just about anything that comes to mind.
 
Summer unveiled a few surprises so I’m in the midst of just as many changes, which I hope to (happily) reflect upon soon. I have a feeling that this fall will bear little resemblance to summer or spring or the previous fall, which is perfectly fine by me. When I was younger, adjusting to new situations proved difficult, but I now find change to be less daunting, more stimulating. I feel relieved that life refuses to be overly pleased with itself, that it is biased toward change.
 
I recently finished Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers (Random House, 2016), the dreamers being those who cling to the American Dream, the supposed direct and easy transaction between hard work and success. The author goes as far as to call America “a magnificent land of uninhibited dreamers,” which seems to suggest that we don’t know when to stop. But these characters do, eventually. More on this Cameroonian writer’s million-dollar debut soon.