Born and raised in Cameroon, educated in the US, Imbolo Mbue is one of the most exciting voices in the explosion of great literature written in the last ten years by African writers living on the continent and in the diaspora. Her debut novel, Behold the Dreamers (2016), is set in New York City and is an immigrant story told against the backdrop of the 2007-08 financial collapse. Her second, How Beautiful We Were (2020), is set in a fictional West African village where traditional ways are disrupted and life degraded by the activities of an American oil company. Both books have won multiple awards, and Mbue has been called “a spellbinding writer engaged with the most urgent questions of our day.”

This will be a reading and discussion course, with no lecturing. We will read approximately 160 pages a week. There is no expectation that participants will be familiar with, let alone experts on, African literature. Our focus will be on how stories are told, how culture is revealed, and how literature gives us insights into the world and ourselves. Optional reading will be Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart. This course is intended as the first in a series.