Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller
Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood is a book I picked up last year and read during a business trip. I remember that a couple of women came up to me to say that they’d just finished it and recommended it as a good read. I agree. I think my fascination with memoirs set in other countries, on other continents, has to do with an overexposure to North American coming-of-age narratives. It’s good to know what was happening in the rest of the world while I was growing up in my little corner of a Canadian province. Of course, the narrative reflects the sentiments of the day - the good and bad, the strong and feeble, the racist and ... what is the word for “not racist” or at least “understanding race dynamics” - and putting them into a context that gives us a look into the complexities of existence as a white farmer in an African country in the late 20th century. Read an interview with author, Alexandra Fuller, by an interviewer from Powell’s Books.