How Beautiful We Were

The Impact of Environmental Injustice on an African Community

Review by Brenda Greene

Some novels have timeless themes. Imbolo Mbue’s novel, How Beautiful We Were (Random House, 2021) falls into that category. The novel, classified as climate and political fiction, centers on people in the fictional African town, Kosawa, a town that visualized itself as beautiful. As a result of the disastrous effects of environmental injustice perpetuated by an oil company, the people of this town are suffering. The opening paragraph of the novel provides a heart wrenching rendering of what they face.

WE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THE END WAS NEAR. HOW COULD WE
HAVE NOT known? When the sky began to pour acid and rivers began
to turn green, we should have known that our land would soon be dead.
Then how could we have known when they didn’t want us to know.

Environmental justice is defined as the recognition that certain communities are subjected to environmental injustice because of factors such as corporate greed, economic profit, land control, etc. In the case of Kosawa, the situation is further impacted by a presence of a President who is complicit in allowing a powerful oil company to harm the people in his community. A dictator, he makes a pact with the exploiters of his community.

The driving force behind environmental injustice is that the needs of those in power outweigh the needs of those who may be harmed because of toxic waste, water pollution, air pollution, and nuclear waste.

How Beautiful We Were is a powerfully written account of the resilience of people and of how a community struggles to retain control of their land when their children are dying from toxic water and eating food made infertile by pollution from oil mining. The uniqueness of this story is that it is told from the perspective of the younger generation who realize that the survival of their village is dependent on them. Readers witness the emotional and devastating toil on the people of a community that initially had hope and that believed the words of opportunists who continued to promulgate lies.

Mbue is a natural storyteller and lyrical writer. Readers will empathize with the people in Kosawa. They will feel the emotion and respect the passion and determination to resist and challenge the lies perpetuated by those who promise reparations that will never be fulfilled. The question of why and how one feels compelled to resist and to become a revolutionary is exemplified in this story. The purpose for why, despite obstacles, people are motivated to fight for their land and community is made extremely clear.

Flint, Michigan, “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana, and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina are examples of what can happen as a result of the unchecked monitoring of toxic waste in our environment. Research reveals that many of the communities affected by environmental injustice are low-income urban or rural areas populated by marginalized groups, Black and Brown people, Indigenous people , and the white working-class. Additionally, situating the novel in an African village, is a message that foreshadows what is necessary to resist in a land where rich natural resources have been exploited and corruption has in many cases gone unchecked.

Mbue underscores the value of community, activism, and the belief that those grounded in a spiritually-based environment can/will survive. The children had to understand the power of the spirit in their lives. They reflect:
We begged the Spirit to forgive our growing doubt of its existence, for though we had seen proof of its supremacy, we’d also seen evidence of its weakness, and we couldn’t reconcile this, its inability to do no more than stand by and watch them destroy us.

The children question how they have come to a state where they are so powerless. They ask, “If our forefathers had known of the oil beneath their feet, would they have so gladly bequeathed it to us? They thought we’d never know such degradation.”
How Beautiful We Were underscores that the way forward is with youth. Its message is that youth must use their voices and be involved in effecting change. Although it is fiction, the relevance of this novel to the politics and impact of environmental injustice across the globe and what we see in our local and national communities cannot be overemphasized.

Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Her second novel, How Beautiful We Were was named by the New York Times as “One of the 10 Best Books” of 2021.

Dr. Brenda M. Greene is Professor of English, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Black Literature, and Senior Special Assistant to the Provost at Medgar Evers College, CUNY. For more information, visit https://www.drbrendamgreene.com