Susan Thomas
Dr. Robert Arnold
LBST 2102-H93
March 24, 2011
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
Alexandra Fuller’s account on her African childhood was insightful and endearing. Her
decision to right this in the form of a diary and the inclusion of the photos of the people she
encountered were excellent touches that allowed the reader to understand what the people looked
like physically in order to match their characteristics, feelings, and impacts they had on other
people’s lives, with a face. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight was an extraordinary tale about a
family that had to deal with hardships, in which they dealt with in a unique and somewhat
unconventional manner. This manner in which they handled their problems was quirky but it
gave the family and the members of the family an identity as well as a relief from their multiple
events of loss. The entire story dealt with familial relations, dysfunction, race issues, defining
what constitutes someone as a normal person in society and communication.
The children in the family were forced to grow up to soon for fear of one day losing their
parents and having to defend themselves. The beginning photo shows a young BoBo loading the
FN. They lived amongst an area of turmoil and they had to protect themselves against terrorists
and the wild. They were also products of a farmer subsequently having to work on the farm and
learn about responsibility at an age that the majority of the young people living in America today
don’t accomplish until they are about sixteen or seventeen. This began to shape the women that
they would become. Living on a farm, they had a secluded experience of life and were guided by
the thoughts and opinions of their parents especially in regards to their mother and her feelings
about race and advantage. When Alexandra was older her mother pointed out to her that although
she was giving her clothes away, “it” was never going to change. It more than likely was
meaning the poverty line that separated them or the business of race relations and the color line.
The mother was very clear that whatever the boundary was existed but she had no power to
change it. “Look, we fought to keep one country in Africa white-run”—she stops pointing her
finger at our surprised guest to take another swallow of wine—“just one country.” Now she
slumps back in defeat: “We lost twice.” She acts in contempt of the fact that she is a minority
and must deal with being the race that is defeated. She may experience a lost sense of identity
and chooses to lash out because she can’t find that true inner happiness because she has so much
unfamiliarity, pain, and loss.
Throughout the course of the book the Fuller family lost three children. Among their
other hardships, they always dealt with their problems by drinking and smoking, but never really
talking out the problems or trying to resolve them. They looked at the Africans and others around
them as being abnormal but in a sense inside their own family there were evident abnormalities.
This method appeared to work for them in the moment but later the mother was diagnosed with
manic depression which means those feelings of loss were never really handled and in a sense
drove her crazy. They didn’t demonstrate effective ways of communication but their method
worked for them and helped them to just forget about the pain.
Lastly, when BoBo married Charles, an American, it seemed to me as if she had finally
found that escape from home in Africa. Although she revisited home to see her family at the
closing of the book and was finally able to make a connection with a place that had brought her
such turmoil, she still had that sense of relief in Charles. Someone who reminded her of her
future yet helped her to memorialize her past.
