Imbolo Mbue / 'With every inch, the challenge multiplies': me and my afro

Novelist Imbolo Mbue. ‘I asked the barber to buzz it all off.’ Photograph: Flora Hanitijo/

Women's hair

'With every inch, the challenge multiplies': me and my afro

It’s been short, long, straight and punky – reflecting the twists and turns of my life and my homeland, Cameroon

The 10 Best Books of 2021

Imbolo Mbue

Saturday 4 February 2017

 

In the summer of 2002, I walked into a hair salon in New Jersey and asked a stylist to cut off all my hair. I was done having hair. Enough with the pain of straightening it with a chemical that scalded parts of my scalp and left others in blisters. Enough with the discomfort of braiding it – eight hours of tugging and wincing followed by painkillers to ease the soreness, or a full day of not being able fully to turn my head.

 

Imbolo Mbue: her characters are complex, with contradictory motivations

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue review – an impressive debut

This is not a story of noble immigrants versus the evil banking class: it is about people who have no room to manoeuvre

The 10 Best Books of 2021

Chibundu Onozu
Fri 4 Aug 2017 11.01 BST

S

o charged has the word “migrant” become that I hesitate to call Imbolo Mbue’s impressive debut a migrant novel; yet all the ingredients are there. The protagonist Jende Jonga is, like Mbue, a Cameroonian migrant to America along with his wife Neni and their six-year old son Liomi. And Clark Edwards, Jende’s boss, an investment banker, is also a migrant, coming to Wall Street from the American hinterland; his ancestors were once newcomers with funny accents and funnier customs.