How Beautiful We Were follows the fictional African village of Kosawa as it begins a decades-long struggle against an American oil company polluting their land and killing their children. Imbolo Mbue's second novel, after the acclaimed Behold the Dreamers, spans multiple generations to examine the costs of resistance and the unequal global economy that sacrifices some communities for others' prosperity. The narrative centers on Thula, who grows from a girl witnessing her village's first confrontation with the company to a revolutionary leader educated in America who returns to continue the fight. Mbue tells the story through multiple voices including collective narrators who speak for the village as a whole, creating an effect both intimate and epic. The novel draws on the real history of oil extraction in places like Nigeria's Niger Delta, where environmental devastation has accompanied resource extraction for decades. Mbue examines how resistance movements sustain themselves across generations, the sacrifices families make for causes larger than themselves, and the moral complexities that emerge when fighting injustice requires violence. For readers seeking literary fiction that engages global inequality without sacrificing psychological depth, How Beautiful We Were delivers both scope and substance.