Oprah picks the books, Karen finds the readalikes
Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers is Oprah’s most recent Book Club selection, hyped by Queen O as, “…everything that’s grabbing the headlines in America right now. It’s about race and class, the economy, culture, immigration and the danger of the us-versus-them mentality.”
The book features a Cameroonian immigrant named Jende Jonga and his wife Neni, a couple determined to succeed in this adopted land of milk and honey, where their son can one day benefit from their hard work. The elusive American Dream seems to be within reach when Jende lands a job as a driver for a senior executive at Lehman Brothers, who values Jende’s services enough for his wife to employ Neni, and something close to friendship brings the Jongas near enough to witness the tarnish under all the glitter.
Then the 2008 collapse hits, evening out the financial playing field, but also jeopardizing jobs and marriages and close to friendships.
It is indeed about “race and class, the economy, culture, immigration and the danger of the us-versus-them mentality,” but it’s also about the myths and realities of America seen through the lens of an outside perspective and the fragility of success.
This list consists of novels in which immigrants struggle, succeed, scrutinize an America that doesn’t always live up to its reputation, endure the national crises of an adopted land, navigate bureaucracy, and try to preserve their own cultural heritage in the rowdy clamor of the U.S.A.
I’m no Oprah, but I make decent readalike lists.
While completing his residency at a Manhattan hospital, a Nigerian-German doctor walks across the city, thinking about his life and experiencing NY as a microcosm of the world; interacting with other immigrants who have come to make their own opportunities, listening to their insights on their adopted land and learning the stories of what they left behind in a melting-pot dissection of New York and post 9/11 America.
Yes, technically this is about the experiences of an expatriate rather than an immigrant, but however you slice it, the Nigerian Ifemelu’s observations on race, gender, politics and culture while living abroad in America are phenomenal.
Same premise as BTD: immigrant family affected by the 2008 economic downturn, but played as comedy. The Wangs are a Chinese family enjoying the spoils of the American Dream: successful family business, Bel-Air mansion, private schools, when they lose it all in the crash. Mr. Wang drags his wife and two children on a road trip to his eldest daughter’s NY home, with many misadventures and self-reflection along the way.
An American real estate tragedy whose conflict stems from a clerical error wrongfully evicting a depressed former drug addict from the home she inherited from her father, sold at auction to an Iranian immigrant planning to flip it to improve his family’s future. As tightly-plotted as a Thomas Hardy novel, the clash between these two blameless and mostly sympathetic characters is a slow shredding of the American Dream.
Mbue’s book is about an “outsider’s” circumstances during the 2008 crash. For a different perspective, try this one from a long-time chronicler of New York’s elite as he returns to his characters from Brightness Falls and The Good Life, putting their already-shaky marriage through the wringer of economic collapse.
After their daughter suffers a traumatic brain injury, a Mexican family leaves everything behind and moves to America where there is a school for similarly-afflicted children and treatment options. Despite immigrating legally, they struggle to assimilate; unable to speak the language, enduring racism and financial strain, finding community among other Spanish-speaking immigrants until even that comfort turns tragic.
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Sepha Stephanos fled Ethiopia during the Revolution and after 17 years in D.C. still hasn’t achieved the American Dream. He owns a struggling deli in a poor neighborhood and only has two friends, both from Africa, with whom he shares an ambivalence to home and adopted lands, stranded in a self-imposed limbo of jaded inaction until a woman and her daughter move to town; harbingers of change both positive and negative.
Written by a Cameroonian author, this short novel captures a fraught period in the history of the Jonga’s homeland: the uneasy coexistence of cultures under colonialism and the awkward transition from traditional values and customs into urbanization and capitalism. Set in the 1930’s, it predates the Jonga’s memories, but oddly enough, was also an era defined by global recession.
A Nigerian immigrant with an economics degree is shunned by corporate America and takes a job driving a cab. Struggling to fulfill the financial demands of his wife and mother, he tries to gamble his way to the American Dream, with disastrous results. His only recourse is to return to Nigeria, steal a sacred statue from his village and sell it to a New York gallery. An idea with, you guessed it, disastrous results.
A valuable perspective on outsider status in America: a Pakastani Muslim is living in NY, happily married and pregnant when her husband dies on 9/11. Overnight, she’s widowed and further isolated by the post-9/11 suspicion of her faith. She finds her husband’s unfinished novel, and when her son is born with Charge syndrome, she devotes herself to his care and to finishing the book on a mission of love and redemption.
