Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders, Mbue said, a nod to the news stories about social uprisings that she as a girl would listen to on the radio. “I would think to myself, why do some people rise up and fight while others do nothing?” she said. How do we balance our desire to fight for change against our desire to protect the ones we love? “One might be tempted to think that because my novel is about characters fighting a multinational, it is a story of good guys versus bad guys,” Mbue said. “It’s important to Imbolo to inhabit her characters to their cores and to render them with as much empathy and moral complexity as possible,” he said.

Source: New York Times February 19, 2021 09:56 UTC