Book #11: How Beautiful We Were
Imagining the legacy of toxic pollution in a fictional African village.
Hi friends! This is Book Club for the Planet, an online community for us to read about the climate crisis in community. Meeting for this book is Sunday, April 3 at 1 pm EDT.
Everyone in the book club was hungry for more fiction, so we’re doubling it up this year. The first selection of fiction gives you a choice between two stories of revolutionary Black women confronting climate collapse: How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, listed as one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2021, and Parable of the Sower, a visionary sci-fi novel by the beloved Octavia Butler published almost 30 years ago. Read one book or read both—we’ll have two separate book club meet-ups to discuss each of them separately.
We’re starting with How Beautiful We Were, a multi-decade story about a young woman in a fictional African village who starts a political revolution against an American oil company that’s wreaking environmental havoc on her community. I’ve started the book on audiobook from my library and I highly recommend it; the multiple voice actors add depth and perspective to the narrative. I’ve also started reading this book the same week as my Sustainability 101 course is covering pollution. The overlap couldn’t be more timely, as my lecture zeroed in on Big Oil and nuclear plants’ legacy of creating sacrifice zones out of rural, low-income communities around the world. (I’m pursuing a graduate certificate in Sustainability through the Harvard Extension School and happy to share more information about the program if you’re ever interested! Just shoot me an email.) Eager to see where Mbue takes her story next.
As for our book club meet-ups, everyone is welcome to join, whether you’ve finished the book or not, and to engage in whatever way feels right to you. Maybe you’re coming to connect with others and work through these questions with a sympathetic sounding board, or maybe you’re coming to learn in a listen-only mode. You are welcome here! Our meetings last for about 1 hour, but it’s totally ok to come for the first 30-45 minutes if that works for you.
For those who are new to our meetings, here’s how it works:
A few days before our meeting, I send out a separate Mailchimp newsletter with a Zoom registration link. Please register so I can plan appropriately for the size of our expected group. If you have unsubscribed to that newsletter (life happens and my email inbox perpetually has over 5,000 unread emails in it, so I get it!), please also make sure to unsubscribe to this Substack as well so I don’t accidentally re-subscribe you to the Mailchimp newsletter when I’m updating the lists every other month.
That’s it, for now! Happy reading!