Episode 26: Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

09/07/16 • 51 min

Behold the Dreamers is the story of Jende and Neni Jonga, Cameroonians who have come to New York in search of a better life for themselves and their son. The time is 2007 and the economy is booming. Jende gets a job as a chauffeur for an executive at Lehman Brothers; Neni does babysitting and housework for the wife. The American Dream seems within grasp. But with the collapse of the financial industry, the promise of that dream comes into question. Is achieving it still possible? Is it even desirable? This is a book about immigration, class, race, gender, money, power - but, even more than that, it's a book about success and failure, desire and love, compromise and loss.

Host Cyd Oppenheimer talks with Imbolo Mbue about learning to write ("It starts with reading a lot of books"), about initial reactions to the book's conclusion ("I had an agent tell me, 'American readers don't like complex endings'"), and about race ("When you come [to America], you realize you're black").

Guest readers Ian Solomon and Matt Levine join Oppenheimer to discuss what this novel has to say about heroism and humanity, dissembling and deception, and the quest for authenticity.

Order today!

Available at:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound

Guest readers Ian Solomon and Matt Levine join Oppenheimer to discuss what this novel has to say about heroism and humanity, dissembling and deception, and the quest for authenticity.

Order today!

Available at:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound

Previous Episode

Episode 25: Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton

In Good Morning, Midnight, the world has gone silent. No sound filters through to Augustine, a research scientist who refused to obey the evacuation order given to his arctic research center; likewise, Sully and her four fellow astronauts hear nothing from Earth on their journey back from Jupiter. The world was there one day and the next day it wasn't; no one knows why. These two characters, one in the farthest reaches of earth, the other in the farthest reaches of space, are forced to confront not just their uncertain futures but also their pasts: what was lost and what willingly relinquished, what was mourned and what regretted, what they aspired to, and the price they paid.

Lily Brooks-Dalton talks about how her job, one winter, at a New England public radio station planted the seed for this novel, about her choice to write what one of our readers termed "the quietest post-apocalyptic book I've ever read" ("Plot and action are not tools that my writerly self reaches for"), and about her decision to end with a cliffhanger ("Coming to a culmination in a place of not knowing is so much of what life is").

Guest readers Tui Sutherland and Brian Slattery join host Cyd Oppenheimer to discuss isolation, loneliness, grief, and hope, and crack each other up playing a game of "Which Astronaut Are You?"

Order today!

Available at:'

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound

Next Episode

Episode 27: The Nix by Nathan Hill

It's Samuel Andresen-Anderson's mother who tells him the Norwegian folk tale of the Nix, a water spirit who lures children to their death. When he is eleven, she leaves him. For twenty-three years, there is silence. Then Samuel - now a college professor and failed novelist who too often retreats into on-line role-playing games - gets a call from a lawyer. His mother has been arrested for assaulting a Republican presidential hopeful, and she wants him to write a letter to the judge attesting to her character. The Nix moves back and forth in time and place, from 1968 to 1988 to 2011, from Chicago to New York to Norway. It shuttles from the Democratic National Convention to the Occupy Wall Street movement to the world of "gamers" to the war in Iraq, blending the personal with the political in ways both prophetic and profound. Ultimately this is a book about all the ways the things we most desire can be our doom, and why we choose to pursue them anyway.

Host Cyd Oppenheimer talks with author Nathan Hill about misadventures in Chicago traffic, writing as a source of joy, and what he left out between the 1200-page first draft and the final 620 pages.

Guest readers Annie Thoms and Jessica Sager join Oppenheimer to discuss ghosts, choosing your own adventure, and the invisible injury.

Buy it today!

Available from:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound