“At eight o’clock Joseph and Kenneth come into the store. They come almost every Tuesday. It’s become routine among the three of us.
Seventeen years ago we were all new immigrants working as valets at the Capitol Hotel.”
Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
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Where I grew up everyone looked like me. Casual racism was commonplace. I’m a white midwesterner from a white town in a white county in a primarily white state (77% white recorded in the last Illinois census; my county in the far south was 97% white). In short, diversity was something I only saw on television. Multiculturalism was purely theoretical.
Mercifully my horizons have been challenged and expanded since my upbringing. Inner growth isn’t easy. I’ve embraced, I’ve resisted, I’ve equivocated — I’ve had every reaction you can imagine a sheltered white person raised in a xenophobic monoculture could have. I’m training myself to listen, and to listen closely.
This wonderful book by Dinaw Mengestu shines the spotlight on a group of African immigrants building their lives in Washington DC. I imagine Dinaw’s time at Georgetown University gave him the background to write so evocatively of the juxtaposition of immigrants examining the American Dream in a rundown, gentrifying neighborhood in our nation’s capitol.
I recommend this book to anyone willing to listen, for anyone ready to hear someone else’s story. White people like me have provided enough commentary. I think it’s time we let someone else speak for awhile.