Corporeality of Communication: Letters Enacting Embodied Labor, Sacrifice, and Transatlantic Mediation in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were

Abstract

This critical reflection investigates the profound material and existential dimensions of communication in a postcolonial narrative. It contends that written correspondence particularly as evinced in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were (2021), transcends its textual function to become a palpably physical and emotionally charged medium. This study posits that such epistolary exchanges are axiomatically inscribed with human effort, significant personal cost, and the arduous task of bridging vast distances and asymmetrical power relations. While existing studies acknowledge the failures of communication in those contexts, it frequently overlook the significant, corporeal investments inherent in such precarious communicative acts. Therefore, the research problem is that the tangible conditions dictating letter transmission shape the ontological and affective experiences of subaltern communities suffering from global capitalist exploitation. This leads to the following question: How do letters, as physical artifacts and laborious endeavors, enact transatlantic mediation and sculpt the emotional topographies of characters in How Beautiful We Were? The purpose of the current work is to examine those intricate material and emotional dynamics, thereby enlightening the resilience forged through such precarious communicative praxis. This work adopts a postcolonial materialist critique, a methodological tool critically relevance to dissect the embodied efforts and socio-economic imprints upon communication. This hermeneutic lens foregrounds the letter as a tangible object, disclosing its embeddedness within exploitative global networks and its capacity to register corporeal suffering and defiant hope, transcending purely discursive analyses. This exegesis is interested in two axes: “Materiality of the Message: Letters as Embodied Labor and Micro-Infrastructures of Hope” and “Epistolary Geographies: Transatlantic Mediation and the Affective Topographies of Distant Communication”.