ABSTRACT

This chapter calls upon recent scholarship by Gregory Claeys to observe the function of New York City as contemporary dystopia for the female migrant protagonist of Imbolo Mbue’s debut novel, Behold the Dreamers (2016). Despite contemporary efforts to re-cast the Afropolitan (Coetzee 2017), Mbue’s novel calls attention to the limits of the Afropolitan figure and the particularized vulnerabilities of postcolonial migrant women as they navigate the dissonance between their abandoned homeland and their adopted cosmopolis. Far from the glamorous social chameleon invoked in Taiye Selasi’s configuration of the Afropolitan (2005), Mbue’s female protagonist, Neni Jonga, offers an oft-ignored counterpoint to prominent discussions and images of contemporary female African immigrants. Behold the Dreamers depicts the variegated ways that gender affects migrant experiences before and after their displacement while portraying the multiple levels at which African women endure social and institutional alienation. As the population of African immigrants in West continues to rise, this chapter will contribute to public discourse about the specific implications and potential pitfalls for African women who deign to ascribe to the notion of “the American Dream.”