Against a Limited and Cruel Myth: Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers, a Realist Counter-Narrative to US Meritocracy in the Post-Recession Era

The article analyses how, in line with two recent literary trends—the turn to sincerity and realism in post-postmodern fiction as well as the emergence of literary works reconsidering the viability of the myth of the American Dream in the increasingly unequal US—Cameroonian-American writer Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers (2016) provides a realist view of the country which counters the master or grand narrative of the American Dream and the meritocratic ideals that sustain it. Although previous scholarly work on the novel has focused on its exposure of the limits that the promises behind the Dream present for racialised immigrants like the protagonist Cameroonian family in Mbue’s novel, this article seeks to contribute to the discussion by exploring an overlooked dimension of this immigrant narrative set around the Great Recession of 2008. Specifically, it examines how, through a deployment of social realism with touches of naturalism, Mbue portrays the clash between her characters’ former expectations of the United States as the Promised Land of equal opportunities through hard work and the harsh reality they encounter there. This reality is nothing but a country shaped by a hyper-individualistic and competitive neoliberal economic system that became particularly predatory in the aftermath of the 2008 crash. Hence, the article contends that, behind this formal choice, lies Mbue’s aim to expose and by extension dismount the dominant albeit fallacious narrative of the US meritocratic Dream. Ultimately, the article explores the protagonist family’s deep and cruel attachment to this widespread myth until their eventual awakening in an ambiguous ending of return to the homeland which, through its detailed reflection of the harmfulness underlying these characters’ blind faith in a constructed and thus elusive dream, counters the cultural narratives promoting it.