Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

This book is fascinating, though not the best pick for those with a weak stomach. It's painfully honest and that's why I loved it. The author has a really rich yet simple way of writing, so you feel, smell, see, taste the entire experience they had growing up in Africa. It's far from a comfortable way of life, and it's downright depressing in some parts, but that's reality. I really respect someone who is able to write about their own life without glamorizing it nor condemning it.

Fuller writes an honest (the book's greatest strength) but skeletal (the book's greatest weakness) account of her childhood in south/eastern Africa. Fuller's parents were of, perhaps, the last generation of white expatriates who hoped to govern in Africa. Her mother's wish: that one country in Africa remain white-run.

Although Fuller, by race, is of this European superclass, her family is not wealthy. So they struggle and they relocate. Her upbringing emboldens her to think her white self superior to the black native muntu.(She admits to this "Anglocentricity" in the best written part of the book, the afterword: "My Africa".)

{{And now a personal recollection. Fuller and I were in Malawi at the same time: she, a member of that expatriate white community trying to forge a life in Africa; me, a member--"two-year wonders", Fuller calls them--of the aid community trying to help in Africa. The groups did not mix well. When I asked the white manager of a tea estate how long it would take before Malawians would be able manage the farm, he said: "These boogers are only one bound out of the jungle". Racist, yes; truthful,. . .? He, though, was willing to stay and work and live in Malawi evermore. I taught my three years at a secondary school, bolted, and kissed ground when I landed back in the U.S. Who deserves criticism? Who helps more?}}

The most moving part of the book: when Fuller visits the hut of a native family and then returns--as a gesture of thanks for their hospitality to her--to offer second-hand clothes to them. That recollection reveals the humanity of the family she visits and the humility and compassion Fuller started to feel as she matured.

That is the type of writing--unfortunately only found in this passage and in her afterword--which would have made this book great.

I was stunned to see a series of negative customer reviews in and amongst those of readers like me who adored this book unreservedly. "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" is an amazing coming-of-age memoir of life in pre-revolution Rhodesia. Hilarious, furiously intelligent, and profoundly sad, Fuller's vibrant passion for her beloved Africa overrides all. I can only imagine that those who were bored with this book weren't up to the challenge of Fuller's dynamic and gorgeous prose.

In 1972, England-born (1969) Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller moved to South Africa with her mother, father, and elder sister, Vanessa "Van." By that time three generations of her family had lived in various parts of Africa. Even so, the Fullers struggled to eke out an existence as tobacco farmers, probably in part due to their (p 306) "...knack for choosing bad-luck patches of land on which to farm..." They lived in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), as well as Malawi and Zambia, and survived, along with an obligatory group of servants (treated as second-class citizens by the Fuller family members young and old) and a varying assortment of dogs, on the proceeds of the harvest. Life was difficult, dangerous, and far from ordinary for Bobo and Van, being raised by an alcoholic, mentally erratic mother (p 210) "living with the ghosts of her dead children," and stoic, capable father, who kept the family afloat but provided little in the way of typical fatherly love and affection. Notable events and topics: a snake encounter, integration of the schools after Independence, the loss of the family's farm, several intra-continental moves, deaths in the family, the 1976 war, violence, and racism. The book's biggest strength is its forthright tone; flaws: its choppy all over the place nonchronological order, prevalent stringing together of word chains, and choice of cover photo (why not the one on the Reader's Guide?). All in all, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is a wonderful, genuine portrayal of one white farm family's life in South Africa. Also good: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery.

I read this book before Ms Fuller's "Scribbling the Cat". I am the same age as Ms Fuller, and also grew up in small Rhodesian towns. I found the racism and generalisation that all white Rhodesian are racist very offensive. Some of my best friends when I was growing up were black children, and if I or my siblings had behaved towards black people the way Ms Fuller and her family did we would have been severely disciplined. This book made me ashamed to be a white African, and I actually have no reason to feel that way.