Dining With the Dictator - Softcover

Laferriere, Dany

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889104808 ISBN 13: 9780889104808

Publisher: Coach House Books, 1994

Synopsis

It is the early 1970s in Haiti. A shy adolescent boy, raised in a devout family of women, gets mixed up in a misunderstanding at the Macaya Bar in Port-au-Prince's Zone Rouge. Terrified that he has become a target for the Tontons Macoutes - Duvalier's feared and hated secret police - he searches desperately for somewhere to hide. There's really only one place where no one will think to look for him: right across the street at Miki's house, an environment totally at odds with the hushed, careful atmosphere of his own home. Miki and her girlfriends are the most irrepressible, beautiful and daring young women in Port-au-Prince. Now he finds himself spending a fateful few days among them, listening in on their conversations and observing their escapades and affairs. It is a weekend filled with self-discovery, and he returns home a changed person, one for whom life holds no more secrets.

About this title

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

From Kirkus Reviews

This nostalgic look at a weekend in Haiti will satisfy anyone obsessed with the sexual politics of teenage girls, but it only skims the surface of its deeper subject, a boy's rite of passage. LaferriŠre (How to Make Love to a Negro, not reviewed) begins his novel with a sort of apology: ``Excuse me for saying it here, but only women have counted for me.'' In this obviously autobiographical portrait, a 39-year-old Miami writer gets a phone call from an old friend that recalls 25-year-old memories of his hometown, Port-au-Prince. LaferriŠre presents the story in the form of a film, divided into scenes, about his protagonist's friendship with a ruffian named G‚g‚, who quickly transforms his buddy from an exemplary son into a delinquent who hangs out in the red-light district. After attracting unwanted attention from a local ``shark'' (hoodlum), the narrator goes into hiding at a neighbor's house--which also happens to contain six nubile nymphettes. He eyeballs Choupette, who sleeps with a married man named Papa; Pasqualine, who likes to parade around half-dressed; Marie-MichŠle, who's in her second year of medical school and complains about her friends being bitches; Marie-Flore, who places the narrator's hand between her legs yelling, ``My vagina says, corruption!''; Marie-Erna, who breaks into uncontrollable sobs every time she laughs; and Miki, the only one with any class. After two days of blissful chaos, he discovers he's not wanted at all and returns to his mother's home a changed man. (See also the review in this issue of LaferriŠre's nonfiction work, Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex?, p. 1336.) Voyeurism only goes so far. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0889104808
• ISBN 13: 9780889104808
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208