Dream come true
NEW YORK — Imbolo Mbue, whose debut novel
is Oprah Winfrey’s latest selection, owes her career in part to the talk-show host.
“Years ago, I went to the library one day in Falls Church, Virginia, to borrow a book and saw a shelf that only had Oprah book club picks,” Mbue, 36, said in a recent interview. “And one of the books that caught my eye was Toni Morrison’s
And after reading it, I was very much in awe of it (and) thought maybe I would try writing, too.”
Mbue’s was published in 2016 and won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, an honour previously given to Philip Roth and Ann Patchett, among others. The book tells of an immigrant from Cameroon who becomes the chauffeur for a Lehman Brothers executive not long before the 2008 financial crisis. In Monday’s announcement, made jointly by Winfrey’s OWN network and magazine, Winfrey said topical and timeless.
“It’s about race and class, the economy, culture, immigration and the danger of the Us vs. Them mentality,” she said in a video. “And underneath it all comes the heart and soul of family, love, the pursuit of happiness and what home really means.”
Winfrey has championed other debut works in recent years, including Ayana Mathis’s
and Cynthia Bond’s She began her club in 1996 and has helped dozens of books become bestsellers. Last year, she provided a major boost to Colson Whitehead’s
which went on to receive the U.S. National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize.
Mbue’s novel is partly based on personal experience. A native of Cameroon, Mbue is a New York City resident who lost her job working in a media marketing department after the crash and wondered how others managed, including the drivers she saw parked in front of the Time Warner Center in midtown Manhattan. was both
NEW YORK — It’s been more than 25 years, and Ice Cube’s still got something to say.
The 48-year-old entertainer has come a long way from his start as part of the West Coast rap group N.W.A. and later a solo artist, branching into movies and now founding a soon-to-be-launched half-court basketball league. But some things haven’t changed, like his willingness to call out law enforcement on the way he sees policing done and to speak his mind on race issues, like he did recently when he took late-night host Bill Maher to task for his use of the N-word during a show.
He brought that attitude to the 25th anniversary re-release this month of his 1991 solo album,
with its newly added-on lead single,
Asked for his thoughts about where the country is with policing, especially in the wake of several high-profile shootings of minorities by officers, he was blunt: “Same as we always been.”
“Police have a philosophy, they have a theory, they have a way of doing stuff, it’s win at all costs,” Cube, born O’Shea Jackson, said in a recent interview. “Win now, apologize later, that’s the model. By having that way of thinking and that philosophy, it’s all about ‘Us against Them,’ that’s the mentality.”
calls on good cops to speak and act against corrupt police officers, a far cry from the attitude in N. W. A’s infamous song, but Cube said he’s “always really hoped good police would take care of bad cops,” that while the 1988 song was a “revenge fantasy” type of thing against police abuse, the new song is a plea for honourable cops to step up and speak out.
“They’re our last line of defence against this onslaught of abuse,” he said.
He has seen changes he thinks are positive, he said, pointing to officers in fatal shootings at least getting to the stage of undergoing trials, even if convictions are still extremely rare. In the days of his youth, “police could do no wrong ... now you fast forward 25 years later, at least the cops are being put on trial for their actions.”
And it’s not just the police that Cube is willing to, well, police. His appearance on
was noted for his strong criticism of Maher, who had jokingly referred to himself by using the N-word during the previous week’s episode. Cube told Maher, “That’s our word, and you can’t have it back.”
“I know some people say, ‘You from a group called N——- With Attitude and you got a problem with other people saying that,’ and yeah, I do. I really do,” he explains.
These days, Cube is getting ready for the launch of BIG3, a threeon-three professional basketball league he co-founded, which kicked off June 25.
Peopled by former professional basketball players like Allen Iverson and Gary Payton, Cube envisions a league that functions like a travelling “basketball festival” for fans like him. With the re-release of
and milestones like recently getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Cube is taking a moment to stop and reflect. “I’m a forward-moving guy, things that’s in my rear-view mirror usually stay there, I’m usually trying to move forward,” he said. At times like this, though, “It’s really all about reflecting and celebrating the moment — but not too much, because (there’s) too much work to do.”