The Reality of the Immigrant American Dream in Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears Anjali Berdia College

Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears focuses on the life of Sepha Stephanos and the way his immigrant journey intertwines with those around him. Due to the violence he saw before leaving Ethiopia, Sepha is “unable to enact the linear trajectory epitomized by his new homeland’s grand narrative: the American dream,” making him the perfect narrator for a story centralizing around immigration American dream, which surpasses promises of upward-mobility and white-picket-fences to include a life better than the one held previously (Cesare 115). Sepha’s distance from this “grand narrative” allows him to sympathize with his friends and family, while also holding onto reality. As Olopade explains, “Sepha Stephanos has come to stitch himself into the dream that has always blanketed the United States: the promise that you can make it if you try” (135). Sepha describes what opportunities the people around him believe America to have, but then he depicts it’s cruel truth. Sepha shows what characters do to deal with this reality, specifically him and his two best friends, which is to continuously play a game detailing the violence in Africa. Sepha claims “the liberal idea of America is at its best in advertising,” so this...