Behold The Dreamers
Book: Behold The Dreamers
Author: Imbolo Mbue
Edition: Softcover, Random House
Behold the Dreamers brings to the forefront the interconnectedness of humanity, our similarities contrasted against our differences in circumstance and most especially a beautiful sharing of an immigrant experience in New York City. The reader is immersed in the highs and lows, failures and joy of a life of an immigrant Cameroonian family living in Harlem in the early 21st century. This is a great novel for discussion especially to delve into topics on immigration, culture, identity and the American Dream.
I recommend this to anyone looking for a novel on immigration and recommend pairing it with A Beautiful Country, which is a memoir that shares the story of a child in New York City who is undocuments. Or pairing it with all we had, which offers another perspective on the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis.
Behold the Dreamers is very accessible both in style and in how the author opens the door to empathizing with characters whom you may think you have little in common.
Like all of my guides, this may contain spoilers. I recommend that you read the book before the guide.
Online Resources
Interviews with the author
Imbolo Mbue shares her own immigration story in a short interview with the Washington Post. In the interview she talks about the struggle of living in the United States without papers and how Jende and she both believe in the American dream. She talks about how the attitude toward immigrants has changed over her lifetime. She also talks about the anxiety of achieving the American Dream and the price of trying to hang on to that dream, the complexity of individuals and bringing empathy to the forefront, and what we can learn from the people of Cameroon.
For a short written interview, MPR news shared For Cameroonian writer, job loss led to the American Dream, where you can also hear Mbue reading from the novel.
Books to pair with Behold the Dreamers
If you want to explore another angle of the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis, I recommend reading all we had by Annie Weatherwax. All we had is also a short and very readable novel. There are online resources on the subprime mortgage crisis in the discussion guide.
To delve deeper into immigrant stories in New York City, I recommend the memoir Beautiful Country, which shares the childhood of a Chinese girl living in New York City in the 1990s who is undocumented. There are a number of short immigration stories in the discussion guide.
Immigration policy
As you consider your views on immigration policy you may want to consider views from some readers of the Atlantic magazine who shared their views in the fall of 2022 on U.S. immigration policy.
The Pew Research Center shared views on immigrants in different countries. This article offers lots of great conversation starters— do you view immigrants as a burden or a benefit to your country? What is your attitude on immigrants’ willingness to adopt a country’s customs? Do you have security concerns with respect to immigration? Should immigrants in a country illegally be deported? Explore how these views differ across countries.
You may want a fact sheet on immigration in your country. Here is a fact sheet on immigration for the United States, an immigration fact sheet for Canada and an immigration fact sheet for France.
WBUR in Boston shared a podcast What recent local cases of alleged abuse of immigrants tell us about workplace protections in Massachusetts that talks about what creates the conditions for workplace abuse and how can it be stopped. Employers wield a lot of power.
Characters
Jende Jonga: immigrant to New York City from Limbe, Cameroon and chauffeur to Clark Edwards
Neni Jonga: immigrant to New York City from Limbe, Cameroon, student in community college, married to Jende
Liomi: Jende and Neni’s six-year old son
Timba: Jende and Neni’s baby
Clark Edwards: Senior executive at Lehman Brothers
Cindy Edwards: Clark’s wife
Vince: Clark and Cindy’s older son
Mighty: Clark and Cindy’s younger son
Fatou: Neni’s friend in New York
Winston: Jende’s cousin who is a lawyer
Bubakar: Jende’s immigration lawyer
Leah: Clark’s secretary
Jerry: Neni’s professor
Anna: Cindy’s longtime housekeeper
Natasha: pastor at Judson Memorial Church
Discussion Topics
Behold the Dreamers is an outstanding novel for a book discussion on immigration. It also offers many opportunities for connection. Just as Jende and Clark seemed to have little in common from the outside, moments of commonality showed through in their parenting styles and in their humanity. Here are just a few ideas to get your book discussion started. Take the conversation where it is meaningful to your reading.
Dreamers
Both the Jongas and the Edwards are dreamers. The Jongas dream of becoming permanent American residents. The Edwards dream of their vision of a perfect life and family— social connections, money, prestige.
What do you think of having dreams? Are they different from goals? Are dreams a part of your life? Why or why not? How have your dreams changed over your lifetime? Have you fulfilled your dreams?
Do you think of the American dream as a specific type of dream? What or who embodies the American Dream to you?
After the fall of Lehman Brothers,
"Dream homes would not be bought. Dream wedding plans would be reconsidered. Dream vacations would not be taken, no matter how many days had been worked in the past year, no matter how much respite was needed.” page 184
When the Lehman Brothers collapses it is as if the Edwards have fallen off of a tightrope and onto a net. When the Jongas aren’t granted asylum it is as if they have fallen off of a tanker into the ocean.
How are aspirations dependent upon where someone is in society? How do major events (like the subprime mortgage crisis or a hurricane) impact folks different depending upon their immigration status, their economic status and the like? What types of nets exist today and how equitable are they? Where are more nets needed than exist? Where are fewer nets required?
Immigrants
In her interview with MPR, Mbue shares,
“Like many immigrants, she said, she had long heard about the opportunities available in the United States. ‘But I don't think that we are really that aware of the challenges of living in this country, and how there are so many issues with class divide, and race, and how hard it is to climb from the bottom to achieve this American Dream.’”
Are you an immigrant? Were your parents immigrants? Were you or they aware of the challenges they would face? How were your or their views formed and how accurate did your or their views play out? Where have you seen the challenges in achieving the American Dream underestimated?
Whether you are an immigrant or born in the country in which you live, in what types of situations do you most frequently interact with immigrants? What is unique about those interactions? What is not unique? In other words, where is the commonality between immigrants and native-born residents?
When Neni attends Winston’s party and encounters many white people she thinks,
“It was one thing to be in the same class with them, to work for them, smile at them on the bus; it was a whole other thing to laugh and chat with them for hours, making sure she enunciated every word so they wouldn’t say her accent was too difficult to understand.” page 90
Have you had this experience either as an immigrant or not understanding an immigrant’s accent? How do you manage these conversations?
In her interview with The Washington Post, Mbue says
“We come here just in awe of this country and wanting to be a part of it.”
Can the United States fulfill that promise? Can your country fulfill that promise to its immigrants?
What are the contributions of immigrants to your country? Why do immigrants come?
Being in control
Neni thinks to herself,
“She wanted to be in control off her own life, and now, clearly she wasn't, and simply thinking about the fact that someone else was going to decide the direction of her future was enough to intensify her headache, leave her feeling as if a thousand hammers were banging on her skull. This helplessness crushed her, the fact that she had traveled to America only to be reminded of how powerless she was, how unfair life could be.” page 63
When do you feel in control of your life? When do you not? What are the forces that you need to combat to maintain a sense of control? When are you comfortable ceding control and when do you work to take control back? How have those feelings shifted over your lifetime?
How is an immigrant’s control limited? How can an immigrant gain more control over their situation?
Parenting
Parenting is a strong theme through the novel with many differences and commonalities in parenting style throughout. All four of the primary parents— Neni, Jende, Cindy and Clark— provide for and nurture their children in different ways.
Was there one parenting style that you most gravitated towards?
Empathy
Vince says to Jende,
“‘It amazes me, you’re so different, and yet you’re so like my parents in many ways.’” page 106
And later Jende says to Clark,
“‘Vince doesn’t see this side of you, sir. He sees a father and works at a bank and makes money but I tell him, I say, your parents have other sides and you do not see because you are their child.’” page 147
So much is unknown between the characters in the novel. Cindy told few people that she was the daughter of a rapist. Clark never knew that Jende was seeking asylum until Jende was about to return to Cameroon. People are complex and often we show only a small number of our facets to others.
In her Washington Post interview, Mbue says,
“I think of myself as a student of empathy right now… I don’t think I was as empathetic until I started writing this book and started looking, especially at the Edwards family and seeing them for who they were.”
Did you empathize with the characters? Were you surprised that you were able to empathize with any particular character? Where have you seen this in your life, where you’ve come to better know an individual and in your understanding of that individual your empathy changes? How can we each expand our empathy and understanding and ultimately. interactions with those around us?
Doers and thinkers
After getting a payment from Cindy, Neni says to Jende,
“‘That’s the difference between me and you,’ she said, ‘You would have been thinking about it too much, wondering whether you should do it or not. Me, I knew it’s what I had to do.’” page 274
Do you think of yourself more as a doer or a thinker? When has that been beneficial and when has it been a detriment? Where does the balance fall for you between planning/thinking and doing?
Transforming over time
Our interactions with one another shape the direction of our lives and who we become, as Neni thinks,
“She worried that she might have too little in common with her friends, being that she was now so different from them, being that she had tasted a different kind of life and been transformed positively and negatively in so many different ways, being that life had expanded and contracted her in ways they could never imagine,” page 360
Likewise Clark tells Jende that Mighty was impacted by the Jongas a great deal,
“‘You may not have realized it but your presence in his life really did impact him a great deal. He still tells me, Jende said this, Neni did that.’” page 371
Who has impacted your trajectory who may not even realize it? Have you ever told someone about their impact upon your life that they may not have previously realized?
Have you ever found out how you’ve influenced a colleague, a friend, a stranger long after an interaction took place? If so how did that make you feel? Do you recognize the little transformations that you’ve undergone overtime that have made you feel more removed from folks from your past? Or perhaps the opposite, you now have have more in common with people who you once held at a distance?
