The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bear Analysis

When leaving home to begin a new life in a foreign country, immigrants often bring with them no more than their past and a dream. These immigrants dream of success, happiness, and a comfortable, safe life. These aspects compose the American Dream, the idea of a successful life full of opportunity in America. However, many immigrants find that this idea is not so easy to achieve. Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears depicts the obstacles that stand against immigrants in achieving the American Dream through the story of Sepha, an Ethiopian immigrant who struggles to make a living in America. These hardships are partly due to a lack of assimilation and work ethic on his part, but are also caused by the immigrant’s confusion and ambiguity regarding ethnic identity. As immigrants struggle to find a niche in America, they often lose sight of the American Dream because their lack of assimilation creates
Contrary to what may be assumed, racism is not the only “shared catalyzing burden” in the way of an immigrant’s success (Chude-Sokei). In order to succeed in the present, one must rise above one’s past. Conquering the pain and hardship that lies behind oneself is the only way to truly move into the future. In The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, Sepha lacks this drive and therefore is unable to move forward in his journey to the American Dream. “Mengestu's novel does not do away with racial division...but rather supplies us with its own modernized version of it, whereby an apparently post-racial and literally postcolonial present is still fighting the demons of the past”