Things are bleak in an African village as its people are slowly wasting away due to nearby oil production by an American company in cahoots with the government. And then the village decides to fight back. Told in the voices of different characters and a Greek chorus of children, the book attempts to answer the question, "Can you ever win the fight?" ( )

[b:How Beautiful We Were|51794532|How Beautiful We Were|Imbolo Mbue|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1575339897l/51794532._SX50_SY75_.jpg|73424026] is a slow but inexorable and devastating novel. I alternated it with other books because of both the pace and atmosphere of dread. Yet it ultimately adds up to a vivid and powerful microcosm of neocolonial exploitation. The setting is a fictional African village, Kosawa, adjacent to oil-drilling by a fictional petrochemical company, Pexton. Oil extraction is polluting Kosawa's air, water, and land. The contamination is sickening adults and killing children. This has already been going on for some time when the book opens. The plot chronicles the efforts of Kosawa residents to resist Pexton and retain their land. It's hardly a spoiler to tell you that they struggle and suffer. The narrative covers about four decades, long enough for generation to succeed generation. Mbue takes a polyphonic approach to narration, which conveys a sense of community very well. The narration also demonstrates the appallingly limited power that the villagers have against the might of an American oil giant. They try various strategies of resistance, all of which have limitations.

Strategies include appeals to the oil company, getting international media to publicise their plight, national political campaigning, sabotaging Pexton's infrastructure, assassinating their workers, and getting an NGO to bring a court case. By the end of the book, none of these have worked. Pexton has made promises, even legal agreements, then broken every one of them. The national government is authoritarian and corrupt, only interested in Pexton's money. Kosawa remains poisoned and many villagers have left. While this is a realistic depiction of brutal commodity capitalism, it is of course grim as fuck. Pexton's oil extraction cannot be stopped, so Kosawa is abandoned rather than saved. Despite the heroic efforts of the villagers, especially Thula, no real hope remains.

I appreciated without enjoying Mbue's examination of the systemic injustice and exploitation that underpins the fossil fuel economy, which is largely invisible to the West. It definitely isn't easy to read, despite being very well-written. Here is an example:

It was then that Nubia told the story of how the Leader's wife and two oldest children had died, eleven months before he started coming to the village meetings. She told me about how the car in which the wife and children were travelling had fallen into a river. The bridge under them had collapsed; government men responsible for maintaining it had misallocated the funds for repair of the bridge, putting it in their own bank accounts. Some of them were the Leader's friends, people he had laughed and drunk with. They consoled the Leader at the wake as his children and wife lay side by side in matching coffins, dressed in white. The Leader, when he returned to work after the funeral, stopped thinking about the right things to do for the sake of others. He thought only about his surviving children.

He worked hard for them, to send them to America, convinced that there was no hope for our country, a country cursed at its birth, beyond salvation. He travelled to villages, doing his work for Pexton, parroting what he was paid to parrot. Whenever he returned home, he hugged his children, ironed their clothes, fried eggs for their breakfast every morning. He never remarried, choosing to cook for his children and clean the house himself. Nubia's friend told her how, one evening, she'd entered her father's bedroom to see him lying on the floor, weeping, clutching a photo of her and her surviving sister.

I'd sighed after Nubia recounted this, and she asked me why I'd sighed. I told her that on all sides the dead were too many - on the side of the vanquished, on the side of the victors, on the side of those who'd never chosen sides. What good were sides? Who could ever hail themselves triumphant while they still lived? Perhaps someday, I added, after all the dead have been counted, there will be one number for the living to ponder, though the number will never tell the full story of what has been lost.

That sequence reminded me of [a:Vasily Grossman|19595|Vasily Grossman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1391607075p2/19595.jpg], but overall [b:How Beautiful We Were|51794532|How Beautiful We Were|Imbolo Mbue|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1575339897l/51794532._SX50_SY75_.jpg|73424026] is more fatalistic than his writing. It gives a snapshot of the suffering caused by the so-called resource curse, without offering any hope for positive change in the future. While realistic, this is extremely bleak. ( )

#ReadAroundTheWorld. #Cameroon

“I know nothing about how a girl makes men pay for their crimes, but I have the rest of my life to figure it out.”

Imbolo Mbue brings us a story set in the 1980s in a fictional African village Kosawa, presumably based on her native Cameroon. This is a powerful hard-hitting story about greed, colonialism and environmental exploitation.

An American oil company Pexton has been drilling for oil in Kosawa and consequently contaminating the water causing the deaths of many. Initially the villagers believe the American assurances that they will leave and all will be well, but one day the village madman deviates from his stereotype and steps up to lead a revolution against the oppressors.

The main character in the book is a girl called Thula who eventually goes to study overseas and returns as an activist. The point of view shifts between Thula, her family and her classmates, all of them deeply impacted by the tragedy, and each bringing their own insights such as:

“We wondered if America was populated with cheerful people like that overseer, which made it hard for us to understand them: How could they be happy when we were dying for their sake?”

"I told her that on all sides the dead were too many—on the side of the vanquished, on the side of the victors, on the side of those who'd never chosen sides. What good were sides? Who could ever hail themselves triumphant while they still lived? Perhaps someday, I added, after all the dead have been counted, there will be one number for the living to ponder, though the number will never tell the full story of what has been lost."

This story exposes the evils of corruption and greed and highlights the extent and impact of environmental disasters which are often covered up. I can understand why the author chose not to name the location as she does not spare the government and the dictator for their complicity and corruption either. I think this is a powerful important book with a clear and strong message. 5 stars. ( )

This takes place in an unnamed country in Africa under a dictator’s thumb. He has made a deal with an oil company that the company may take all the oil under one village’s land.

The dictator makes masses of money from this project. The oil company also makes masses of money, especially as it turns out, they had signed an agreement that they have no responsibility for consequences for the villagers’ health, the taking of their land or disruption of their way of life. At first the villagers are excited to learn there will be jobs. But very few of them receive jobs or money. Those who do seem to be creatures owned by the company. The environmental impacts are huge: oil spills destroy farm land, the once pristine river has been dubbed the River of Death due to its chemical load and constant burning at the oil site destroys the air.

When children sicken and die, the men of the village organize a delegation to the capital to talk to the government, but the delegation disappears. Another delegation then goes to check on the first with discouraging results. The dictator solves the complaints by sending in in his military to permanently quiet the villagers by massacring them.

An international justice organization takes up the case to expose the American oil company. At first it seems things will get better as the company agrees on some reparations and bottled water for the children. They provide secondary schooling for the older children and the best scholar in the village, a girl named Thula, is sponsored to go to the United State for college and post graduate work. She learns how ordinary people can stand together to change the course of history.

But nothing really changes – more broken promises, more violence and killings. It’s a pattern that has repeated itself since the first Europeans arrived in the area to take slaves and then later ‘recruited’ workers for their rubber plantations. It’s a story of greed and money and ‘might making right’ whether the might belongs to the colonialists, the corporations, or the leaders within the country itself. All is compounded by suspicions of tribes against each other and the naïve belief of the villagers that if the authorities only knew about the people’s suffering, they would act to fix it.

This book is pretty bleak. Are there answers? I’m also left (as I’m sure the Cameroonian author intended) contemplating how much responsibility belongs to the western nations using the oil.

This is well written with just enough hope dangled that circumstances will change to keep me reading. ( )

“We should have known the end was near,” the story begins. “When the sky began to pour acid and rivers began to turn green, we should have known our land would soon be dead.”

How Beautiful We Were takes place in a fictional African country, but the story bears a close resemblance to some very similar problems in real life. The book explores topics, such as imperialism, political corruption, environmental destruction, acts of rebellion, and courage.

Imbolo Mbue is a highly talented writer. Considering the topic, the book is sobering and difficult to read, yet she writes it so beautifully. I’m officially a fan of Imbolo Mbue!

( )