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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu
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Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution for a new start in the United States. Now he finds himself running a failing grocery store in a poor African-American section of Washington, D.C., his only companions two fellow African immigrants who share his bitter nostalgia and longing for his home continent. Years ago and worlds away Sepha could never have imagined a life of such isolation. As his environment begins to change, hope comes in the form of a friendship with new neighbors Judith and Naomi, a white woman and her biracial daughter. But when a series of racial incidents disturbs the community, Sepha may lose everything all over again.
Watch a QuickTime interview with Dinaw Mengestu about this book.
- Sales Rank: #173278 in Books
- Brand: Riverhead Trade
- Published on: 2008-02-05
- Released on: 2008-02-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.01" h x .59" w x 5.18" l,
- Binding: Paperback
- 240 pages
Features
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Barely suppressed despair and black wit infuse this beautifully observed debut from Ethiopian émigré Mengestu. Set over eight months in a gentrifying Washington, D.C., neighborhood in the 1970s, it captures an uptick in Ethiopian grocery store owner Sepha Stephanos's long-deferred hopes, as Judith, a white academic, fixes up the four-story house next to his apartment building, treats him to dinner and lets him steal a kiss. Just as unexpected is Sepha's friendship with Judith's biracial 11-year-old daughter, Naomi (one of the book's most vivid characters), over a copy of The Brothers Karamazov. Mengestu adds chiaroscuro with the story of Stephanos's 17-year exile from his family and country following his father's murder by revolutionary soldiers. After long days in the dusty, barely profitable shop, Sepha's two friends, Joseph from Congo and Kenneth from Kenya, joke with Sepha about African dictators and gently mock his romantic aspirations, while the neighborhood's loaded racial politics hang over Sepha and Judith's burgeoning relationship like a sword of Damocles. The novel's dirge-like tone may put off readers looking for the next Kite Runner, but Mengestu's assured prose and haunting set pieces (especially a series of letters from Stephanos's uncle to Jimmy Carter, pleading that he respect "the deep friendship between our two countries") are heart-rending and indelible. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In his run-down store in a gentrifying neighborhood of Washington, D.C., Ethiopian immigrant Stepha Stephanos regularly meets with fellow African immigrants Ken the Kenyan and Joe from the Congo. Their favorite game is matching African nations to coups and dictators, as they consider how their new immigrant expectations measure up to the reality of life in America after 17 years. From his store and nearby apartment, Stephanos makes keen observations of American race and class tensions, seeing similarities--physical and social--to his hometown of Addis Ababa, where his father was killed in the throes of revolution. When Judith, a white woman, and Naomi, her mixed-race daughter, move into the neighborhood, Stephanos finds tentative prospects for friendship beyond his African compatriots. Mengestu, himself an Ethiopian immigrant, engages the reader in a deftly drawn portrait of dreams in the face of harsh realities from the perspective of immigrants. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Ethiopian escapes genocide, makes new life in Washington
For anyone who's caught the gaze of a foreign-born waiter or cabdriver and wished for a deeper understanding of his half-glimpsed life, reading fiction is one way to crack open the dusty window that often separates us. It's all the more intriguing when the writer is as observant as 29-year-old Dinaw Mengestu, who immigrated to America in 1980, after his family fled Ethiopia's genocidal Red Terror. His haunting and powerful first novel, "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears," is one of the first to give voice to that experience.
His story centers on 36-year-old Sepha Stephanos, who left his mother and brother in Ethiopia 17 years earlier, after his father was brutalized and escorted to his death by soldiers backing Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Communist dictator who overthrew the senile Haile Selassie.
For the past decade, Stephanos has been quietly reading Dostoyevsky, Dante and Naipaul behind the counter of his convenience store in a run-down Washington, D.C., neighborhood. His evenings are punctuated by visits from Kenneth from Kenya and Joe from Congo that glitter with dark wit. The three, who met years before, when they were valets at a local hotel, now drink shots beneath a 20-year-old map of Africa and play a game that begins when one of them names a dictator; the challenge to the others is to guess the year and country of each coup.
Into this world of suppressed dreams and frustrated memories walks Naomi, an angular 11-year-old know-it-all who, like Stephanos, misses her African father. She starts visiting Stephanos regularly and reads the newspaper with him, stealing his heart as she gravely shakes her head over the failure of American policy in the Middle East and the lack of resources devoted to the global AIDS crisis.
The spark between this spirited girl and cautious man shines through in their dialogue, which is among the sharpest in the book. It also draws Stephanos closer to Naomi's mother, Judith, a single, white professor who stands out because she's renovating one of the grand old houses in this predominantly black neighborhood, and also because her daughter's skin is "lighter than black but darker than white." Soon, Judith and Stephanos begin a hesitant romance, pushing him to consider for the first time what it might feel like to be part of a family again. (The book's title comes from "The Inferno," when Dante emerges from hell and once again lays his eyes on the stars.)
But the same wave of gentrification that brought Judith and Naomi into Stephanos' neighborhood ushers in economic and social pressures threatening his livelihood. Judith's shining four-story mansion also becomes a powerful symbol of the tipping social scale, as longtime black residents are evicted from the area.
We know from the outset that Stephanos' relationship with Judith is doomed, and his resulting downward spiral doesn't always propel the reader along at a fast clip. But what keep the pages turning are Mengestu's tangy and perceptive characterizations and well-crafted set pieces that are alive with personal experience.
Mengestu wrings bravado and pathos out of an episode where Kenneth puts on a suit and rents a car, to make the right impression when he and Stephanos try to buy a used car. After pulling into the dealership "cautiously, as if every minor gesture of ours were being judged," Kenneth decides against going into the main office, instead donning sunglasses and waiting for a salesman to come to him, as he and Stephanos lean coolly against the hood of his car. But the two African immigrants never get more than a "one-eyed glance" from the salesmen and leave 20 minutes later, empty-handed.
Among the most arresting scenes are those involving Stephanos' uncle Berhane Selassie, who is 20 years older than he and once lived on a well-appointed ranch outside Addis Ababa. At least among those in his close-knit apartment building, Selassie has retained the aura of respect that his name commanded in the old regime. Though now working as a cabdriver during the day and parking attendant at night, Selassie sometimes reveals "remnants of the humorous, snobbish young man he had once been." For example, when he comes home grinning inexplicably after his long day's work and Stephanos asks him why, Selassie responds enthusiastically, "Gas is so cheap!," though clearly that's the last reason he came to this country.
When Stephanos gets his own eviction notice and his confidence in his business falters, he returns to the apartment he used to share with his uncle and opens a lockbox in Selassie's closet. Inside are the letters his uncle wrote to U.S. Presidents Carter and Reagan during the Red Terror.
The first letter to Carter -- before his uncle shed his innocence and began writing in the spare, detailed style he found in the Washington Post -- still tugs at Stephanos: "Dear President Carter ... I am one of those people for whom nothing is left of their home country. Everything I have has been taken away from me. For many ages, the United States and Ethiopia have been close allies. There is a deep friendship between our two countries. Therefore, it is imperative that the United States, along with Ethiopia's friends in Europe, come to her aid at this critical juncture in her history." That "friendship" between the United States and Ethiopia, which was solidified when Ethiopia became a founding member of the League of Nations and later the United Nations, has long since been betrayed by the Cold War and oil politics abroad. Yet, as Mengestu closely observes the human face of that betrayal, as it plays out amid the racism and class politics of Washington, D.C., he gives us another chance to understand the Ethiopian American experience, in a deeply felt novel that deserves to be read. -- San Francisco Chronicle, March 11, 2007
Mengestu has told a rich and lyrical story of displacement and loneliness. I was profoundly moved by this tale of Ethiopian immigrant's search for acceptance, peace, and identity. -- Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
These characters are artfully crafted, original and complex in their humanity. Mengestu wants us to know them, to hear their story, and he succeeds in giving us a novel that is fresh and new. -- Miami Herald
This a great African novel, a great Washington novel, and a great American novel. -- The New York Times Book Review
This first novel, by an Ethiopian-American, sings of the immigrant experience, an old American story that people renew every generation, but it sings in an existential key...His straightforward language and his low-key voice combine to make a compelling narrative, one that loops back in time yet seems to move forward with an even pace. -- Alan Cheuse, Dallas Morning News
This is not a story for only an immigrant audience. The author, Dinaw Mengestu, writes in a way that makes this a universal story. In doing so, he does what the best writers accomplish. -- The Oregonian
[A] tender, enthralling debut novel about the hidden lives of immigrants who are caught between the brutal Africa they have fled and an America that will not full admit them...Mengestu brilliantly illuminates both the trauma of exile and the ways in which so many of us are still looking for home in America. -- Richard McCann, O, The Oprah Magazine
[E]loquent...The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is not a conventional immigrant novel, and Stephanos is not a garden-variety emigre...deeply moving. -- Chicago Tribune
[W]onderfully written and moving. -- Esquire
[W]renching and important...Seldom has a character emerged in a recent novel who is so compellingly dark but honest, hopeful but dismal, and able to turn his chronicle into a truly American tapestry...Mengestu has made, and made well, a novel that is a retelling of the immigrant experience. -- Chris Abani, Los Angeles Times
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Beautiful First Novel About an Ethiopian Immigrant
By Joseph Landes
I picked Dinaw Mengestu's first book after being recommended it by my brother who went to the same MFA in Writing program as him at Columbia. I had heard about his newer book How to Read the Air but had not yet read it. I very much enjoyed The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears. It is a beautifully written book that keeps your attention throughout, moves quickly, and is completely enjoyable and a sensitive piece of work. The story is about a younger man named Sepha Stepanos who fled the Ethiopian Revolution many years ago and came to Washington D.C. Like many new immigrants he isn't quite sure what job to do so after living with his uncle for a while and working in a hotel, he opens up a convenience store in a newer and what was supposed to be a soon to be flourishing neighborhood. He meets up with two other African friends from other parts of the continent and they share stories and experiences as they too go through their own trials and tribulations trying to make it in America. Soon, a new family moves into the neighborhood--a single mom Judith and her daughter Naomi. Sepha becomes close with them and particularly the daughter who hangs out at his store after school. Sepha can't quite determine what sort of relationship he should have with Judith but clearly enjoys being a father figure to Naomi. The neighborhood and his store quickly go downhill and Sepha needs to decide how he will react to both. A very good book that I highly recommend.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting perspective
By Diana M. Frank
If you have any interest in the immigration issue this book will give you a different perspective on it. Not everyone comes to the USA simply for opportunity. Many people come because they can no longer live in countries destroyed by wars fought over control of natural resources. For many this is not the land of opportunity. In the current situation it isn't the land of opportunity for Americans. In reading this book and also Stones from the Creek, I see the opportunity to compare the past and present immigrant/worker experiences with an eye toward finding common ground. We know that this isn't the land where the streets are paved with gold. We know that you can work 2 jobs and still not make ends meet. We know that in spite of the fact that there is a black president, racism still exists. Great book. I'm reading another one of his now.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Worthy Debut Novel About the Immigrant Experience
By William Capodanno
Mengestu's debut novel brings to life the American immigrant experience in a touching way. The novel is about an Ethiopian immigrant, Sepha, and his experiences in the Washington DC area over a seven month period in the 1970s. Mengestu captures the hopes and dreams, as well as the struggles and disappointment, of those coming to this country for a better life than in their native land.
Sepha owns a small neighborhood grocey story around Logan Circle, a community underground gentrification. We see his hopes for a more prosperous and successful business grow as work crews start renovating local buildings. Most notably, Sepha decides to start selling sandwiches and buys fresh deli meats and promotes this to what he hopes will be his new clientele.
The two dimensions of this book I found so rewarding are the interplay and relationships of the various characters with Sepha as well as the ups and downs of Sepha's experience representing the broader ebb and flow of immigrant experience.
Judith, a single white academic restores a four story brick neighborhood in the building and moves in with her wiser-than-her years 11 year old Naomi. The depth of Naomi's character was wonderful -- a somewhat sassy, precocious but sweet girl. We see Naomi take to Sepha and a deep bond created between the two of them -- Sepha becomes a father/older brother figure to her. Especially poignant was the joy and fun they had reading of the Brothers Karamazov together in the store.
At the same time Sepha begins to fall for Judith and we see the impact that race and language has on their relationship. Once again, the hope of a bright future gives way to the dim reality of the struggle most first generation immigrants face.
Mengestu ultimately crafts a very satisfying and enjoyable read. It brings smiles and laughter to the reader as well sadness and disappointment -- working both at the character level but at the broader level of immigrant experience. Mengestu is a young author that you'll want to keep your eye out for in the future.
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