The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu
The story is about an Ethiopian immigrant, Sepha Stephanos, who fled to America when he was a teenager during
the Red Terror and has been living in and around Washington, DC, for seventeen
years much of which he has spent as a resident and store owner in Logan Circle,
a neighborhood that is characterized as only poor black people live. His life
is only his store and his two fellow
African friends Ken from Kenya and Joe from Congo who share this bitter
nostalgia and longing for his home continent. As his neighborhood begins to
change, hope comes in the form of a friendship with a new neighbors Judith and
her Noami, a white woman and her biracial daughter which later on feel in love
with the mother and got fond of the eleven years daughter. But when a series of
racial incidents disturbs the neighborhood, Sepha loses both the woman he loved
and the girl that he was fond of. Thus, the story revolves around Sepha’s
store, his friends, Judith and Noami, his nostalgia about this past life in
Ethiopia as well as his loneliness in America.
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