Narrating Ecopolitics and the Poetics of Slow Violence in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were

In her second novel How Beautiful We Were (2021), the Cameroonian-American writer Imbolo Mbue addresses the devastating environmental and human consequences of Big Oil on a community in a fictional African setting. In this article I investigate the power of narratives to evoke environmental injustice and discuss the narrative strategies and dominant themes employed in this ‘oil novel’ to depict the violent disruptions experienced by the environment and the members of the community. While my reading is guided by insights gained from the work of a number of postcolonial environmental critics, several of the concepts proposed by Rob Nixon (2011) have proven especially useful. More precisely, in this article I explore issues such as the power of literary representation and narrative strategies, the impact of colonial legacies and post-independence conditions, neo-colonial realities of toxic imperialism, and their repercussions on cultural identity and environmental integrity.