I am Thula: My Questions for Imbolo Mbue about How Beautiful We Were


How beautiful we were

Imbolo Mbue

Whose shoulders do you stand on?

How do you identify?

  • “We should have known the end was near.” --share how this first sentence relates to the entire story?

  • the environmental degradation—what type of research did you do to build this world, how does research look —Kossowa—why a fictional place?

  • Thula—three generations of women—can you talk about how this book explores lineage and how we traverse time

    • In many ways this is our coming of age story. Talk about this character and how she came to exist in your mind, how much if any is Thula like you?

  • Children “What’s it like being a child in a world like this? What does your book say to children? Tell us about your childhood and how it influences the story?”

  • Sahul— the role that love and relationships play in the story. Why is that important.

  • There are many antagonists in the story. Can you talk about them from the government to the corporations to the media to even the people you think are coming to help.

  • But on top of everything we have a love story/many love stories. How does love shape the lives of these characters (Thula & Austin, Sahul & Malabo, Yaya & Grandpa)

  • patience vs fighting

  • reckoning vs reparations

  • movement vs revolution

  • Talk about the way that land and land rights show up in the book and in real life and why this is an important moment to talk about land rights, human rights, and international law

  • jakani and sakani—can you talk about being the supernatural elements of the story and why they were important to include

  • Its like you read this and you’re saying I want to do something I must do something but its like but where what how…what do you say to that reader?

  • Juba’s narrative and how people become Juba’s what was it like writing from Juba’s point of view?

  • being an immigrant—leaving and returning what is that like for you as a writer this concept of home

  • What are your thoughts on reparations and repair. Can the events of Kossowa ever truly be prepared? What would reparations look like?

  • Lets talk about movement building and Thula’s work to organize her people, why is organizing such a task

  • Flooding and Nigeria and Cameroon and climate change and when you see these things played out in the world

  • myth (blood of the leopard)

  • Americans, Pexton “if they were so disappointed in our ways, why don’t they leave”

  • Government/Corporations (“keeping countries like ours in their debt”) pexton/his excellency “more of their moral side”

  • money

  • yaya—ancestors, her husband, the history, slavery convo between af & af am

  • Kossowa

  • The Restoration Movement

  • “It was our land…

  • “and we did nothing”

  • jakani and sakani

  • movements “if it can happen here, it can happen there, humans are mortal and so are the systems they build”

  • liberation day

  • Flooding and Nigeria and Cameroon and climate change and when you see these things played out in the world