Struggles of a Dreamer by Yahaya Baruwa

Yahaya Baruwa’s Struggles of a Dreamer is a special book to me for reasons entirely independent of the novel itself. I recently taught a student who was enthusiastic, driven, and a dedicated reader. Several times, he discussed with me how this book set him on a better path and inspired his love of reading. He discussed meeting the author and getting his copy signed. Then, on the day of our exam, he brought me his personal copy as a gift. It seemed too meaningful—too special to him—to keep it. I didn’t feel worthy to be given something so special to him and I tried to return it, but he insisted I keep it. It may very well be the most meaningful gift I’ve received in all my years of teaching.

In a fun coincidence, Struggles of a Dreamer is about people giving books to one another. The book starts with Tunde, a beggar in New York who is assaulted and robbed of the few possessions he has. Tunde tells the nurse his life story, moving from Nigeria to Toronto. In his previous life, he worked for a rich man who was similarly robbed and had his life threatened. Instead, he paid for his life and dismissed Tunde with a bonus. Things did not go well when Tunde moved to North America, and he makes a promise to his nurse to turn his life around and help his wife and child get to North America. Living in the street, a wealthy woman in a limo passes by and gives him an envelope. Hoping for cash, he instead finds a book. The woman, a CEO of a beauty company, leaves a note about receiving the book and changing her life and we get her own story of hardship. Then, he reads the book, which is the story of Toku’te, another poor man who wants to leave his family’s farm to become wealthy.

The book then takes on layer after layer of people telling stories, similar in structure to the spiral of of Scheherazade’s stories in The Arabian Nights. There are a bunch of anecdotes about poor folk turning their luck around through sheer dedication and the book reads like a series of parables or folk tales. Stylistically, the book is a bit messy. There are some loose ends that just get dropped, some inconsistent quotation marks that make it unclear who is speaking when, some increasingly infrequent interruptions of Tunde commenting on the Toku’te narrative—so infrequent that you keep wondering if the main character of the frame narrative is ever coming back.

On occasion, Baruwa offers some insightful comments. I would venture that the highlight in that respect is the proverb that “Something that happens once will not happen again, but something that happens twice will surely happen a third time” (135). The other insights peppered throughout the book offer surface-level platitudes, which culminate in the six rules of success in the final section of the book. At their core, the rules break down to being: 1) have a vision, 2) thoughts become reality, 3) be disciplined, 4) manage your fear, 5) be willing to learn, and 6) handle money profitably. The rules for success are literally spelled out for the audience with the same (lack of) subtlety as The Alchemist.  

I can’t say the book really did much for me by way of inspiration. It seems to play into a naive notion of individual effort with one eye permanently on the concept of wealth. As a result, its appeals to the spirit are a bit at odds with the drive towards profit. I’m just lucky that my engagement with the book was driven by a sense of connection and a spirit of intellectual generosity. I’ll forever be grateful for the gift of the book—and I’ll forever be grateful for the impact it had on my student—even if the book does very little for me overall. 

Thanks to my student and happy reading!