“Swapping our blood for oil money”: Neo-liberal subjectivity and uneven development in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were

This article critically examines the literary representation of ecological and economic exploitation in Imbolo Mbue’s novel How Beautiful We Were, focusing on the fictional African village of Kosawa and its exploitation by Pexton, an American oil corporation, in collaboration with the indigenous Kosawa leadership. The novel highlights how neo-liberal governance practices destroy local communities and environments, since the state abdicates its responsibility towards its citizens, instead prioritizing corporate interests and market mechanisms. As a work of petrofiction, the novel illustrates how the state’s failure to regulate Pexton’s activities results in catastrophic environmental damage. This article argues that works of fiction can model how corrupt leadership and the practices of neo-liberalism can be challenged at a local level, even where this results in individual tragedy, paralleling actual direct action such as that undertaken by the Ogoni people in Nigeria during the 1990s which resulted in Ken Saro-Wiwa’s and other activists’ deaths.