How Beautiful We Were

The first line of Chapter 1, “We should have known the end was near. How could we not have known?” (3), sets up the expectation that the book will end in disaster, giving everything that follows an ominous and foreboding tone. This rejection of a positive future contrasts the first-person plural narrator of the children—rather than heralding the next generation’s potential, the collective narrator highlights the universality of shared Grief and Intergenerational Trauma among the children. Throughout the first two chapters, the children worry constantly about whether they or their loved ones will die. Their primary emotion is dread: “Waiting has become us—we’ve been waiting for one thing or another since the day we were born” (61). The level of grief and anxiety that the children live with strips them of the ability to enjoy youth. Further, the children must take on more responsibility than they otherwise would because of the village’s collective hardship. When Thula’s father goes to Bezam, Thula believes “he’s counting on me to be strong, especially for Mama—make sure she eats and sleeps well, for her sake and the sake of our unborn” (42). This taking on of adult responsibilities, though necessary, perpetuates the sense of generational slippage. Notably, these need to take on adult responsibilities early disproportionately affects girls like Thula. The novel is interested in how gender roles will play out when they become women impacted by the choices that the men around them make without the agency to voice their objections or concerns.

A running theme in these chapters is the lack of empathy on the part of Pexton and the country’s government towards Kosawa’s plight, implying that this voluntary dehumanization of their victims is one of the consequences of Neocolonialism and Foreign Aid. Villagers wonder how people who have children of their own can ignore the suffering of Kosawa’s children. Malabo asks, “Is the government a rock, a thing with neither brain nor heart?” (41); he is convinced that the problem is a lack of information and believes that if he can get some official to really understand their story, help will come. However, the novel avoids ever humanizing the Pexton officials. In giving the Pexton representatives nicknames rather than real names, Mbue suggests that they are not worthy of being identified people usually are; instead, they are more closely linked to an implacable force that stands against the villagers.

The novel explores several conflicts between traditional belief systems and modern values. Most obviously, Pexton’s representatives condescendingly reject Kosawa’s cultural ideas, first insulting the taboo against touching Konga, and then turning villagers’ beliefs about death against them: When a disappeared man’s father “implores the Leader to at least confirm to us that the Six are dead, so we can offer sacrifices to the Spirit on their behalf, help hasten their voyage to be with our ancestors,” the Leader refuses on the basis that “Pexton cannot involve itself with superstitious matters” (50). However, another aspect of this divide also plays out between generations in Kosawa. In choosing to go to the capital, despite elders saying that he should not, Malabo declares that the time for tradition has passed. While elders argue for waiting and discourse, the younger generation advocates for direct action.

The novel does not pick sides in this conflict between tradition and modernity. Rather, it offers cultural myths as analogies for the present day. Kosawa’s creation story seemingly describes the village as innately powerful because of the people’s leopard-infused blood. But the image of the trapped leopard complicates this interpretation: while the predator is powerful, the story shows it begging for mercy. Similarly, in Kosawa’s interactions with Pexton, Kosawa is the abject leopard, while Pexton is the three brothers, choosing between money and empathy. Only Konga has the outsider perspective to flip this narrative on its head, no longer casting Kosawa as the permanent victim giving up its power to survive. Instead, he tells the Pexton representatives that spending a few days in Kosawa is a privilege—that they are lucky to be among those who have leopard in their veins.