SongWriter

Season 6, Episode 3

Imbolo Mbue

Imbolo Mbue, photo by Kiriko Sano

Cameroonian-American author Imbolo Mbue’s second novel is How Beautiful We Were. The intimate, closely-observed story is set in a village that has been environmentally victimized by an American oil company.

“At the center of the story is a young girl named Thula,” Imbolo says. “She’s growing up in this village called Kosawa, and she watches as her friends are dying all around her. And even as a child she is very aware that she needs to do something about it, to put an end to the suffering.”

Though the village in the book is fictional, anthropologist and psychologist Dorsa Amir notes that this kind of problem is common in the lives of the indigenous people she works with. Dr. Amir has spent a lot of time in particular with the Shuar, a tribe that has been unusually successful in confronting invading forces.

Dorsa Amir

Dorsa Amir, photo by Matt Jordan

“Much as what we encounter in this  book, indigenous populations in South America – the Shuar among them – often have to come together in terms of collective action to external threat,” Dr. Amir says. “There’s a lot of people that want the resources that are on their land, their land, their labor, and there’s this constant dialogue and sometimes conflict.”

Dr. Amir points out that smaller groups of people, like the Shuar and the people of Kosawa, have real advantages in fighting collective issues, especially relative to western democracies and the polarization that comes along with larger population sizes. The human brain, she notes, simply cannot simulate the difference between one billion and ten billion. Yet we are still affected and swayed by things that would be more accurate or relevant at smaller population sizes.

“Because we’ve kind of broken our brains, so to speak, we think there’s a lot more consensus to things, because there are so many people in the world and so many opinions,” Dr. Amir says. “And so it creates this environment where it’s just really hard to activate people as a collective.”

Crys Matthews

Crys Matthews, photo by Emily April Allen

The challenges of collective action are a central part of singer-songwriter and activist Crys Matthews' work. Though artists are sometimes discouraged from political activism by some audiences, Crys sees both art and activism as part of the same empathy-engagement process.

“It’s really the empathy piece, being able to empathize with someone else’s struggle,” Crys says. “It doesn’t even have to be equally horrible. It’s just I have empathy for the fact that you all are having to endure this struggle. I am also enduring this struggle; we should unify so that neither one of us has to struggle.”

While Crys acknowledges the challenge of population size and disinformation and apathy, she argues people have to lean as hard as they can in the opposite direction.

“I’m a very firm believer in joy as a form of resistance, because I think that it’s only love and joy and hope that keep people fighting,’” Crys says. “The chance for love, the chance for hope, the chance for joy – that’s something worth fighting for.”

Templeton World Charity Foundation

Season six of SongWriter is made possible by a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation

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This project was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc (funder DOI 501100011730, under the grant https://doi.org/10.54224/31681). The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.