Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


There’s an Important Story and Message Hidden Somewhere in This Thing

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue

by Leave a Comment

Bingo Square: Own Voices I’d been debating between this and Everything I Never Told You for this category but since I had just read The Bride Test, which was about an Vietnamese-American family and am thinking about reading a book about a Chinese family for my “Back to School” read, I figured I should diversify instead of reading about a Chinese-American family for this.  Imbolo Mbue is originally from Cameroon and has lived in the United States for ten years, and her novel follows a […]

What Happens When The American Dream Eludes Immigrants

by Leave a Comment

“Behold the Dreamers” is one of those books I appreciated but didn’t always enjoy. It’s very frank in its portrayal of the characters in which they are all flawed, yet very real. I enjoyed and disliked this as I tend to “escape” into books and I don’t always like having to dislike a character all the while recognizing that the character could very well be someone I’ve met in real life. In this sense I’d say Mbue’s art reflected life. The novel focuses on Jende […]

Another man’s fate.

by Leave a Comment

The story’s premise sounded promising: a young family from Cameroon try to make a life for themselves in New York City just before the bottom falls out of stock market and on the brink of swearing-in the first African-American President of the United States. Jende works hard at his new job as a chauffeur for a big shot at Lehman Brothers. Neni takes care of their young son, Liomi, while studying around the clock in hopes of getting into pharmacy school.  The narrative alternates between the […]

11: Behold the Dreamers

by 1 Comment

I read Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers for CBR8, and I’ve included my original review link here. F has chosen this for our February book club, and I’m excited to discuss it with the group. I am trying not to re-read books, since my TBR is enormous, but I was very glad to revisit this novel. In the wake of the 2016 election, the topic of immigrants and their American Dreams takes on an added importance today as we shape policy (or, in the case […]

New fiction about the 2008 recession

by Leave a Comment

Because I’m a sucker for the new and shiny books, I ended up placing a lot of holds at my library at the same time—and getting them all at once. And with books that are brand new, you get less time to read them. And when Jonathan Safran Foer’s enormous new book must get read in time for a book signing, you panic. So that’s what happened in the month of September. We’ll not discuss the fact that it’s now November, and my reading has […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo