Newark Library Blog

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight;’ an African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

How would you like to grow up in this world, children over five “learn[ed] how to load an FN rife magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house and ultimately, shoot-to-kill.”  Fuller was raised on African soil during the Rhodesian civil war (1971-1979).  She describes the wartime relationships between blacks and whites through the honest eyes of a child.  Curfews, mosquitoes, land minds, cobras are all part of her daily life.  This is an honest, unsentimental and unblinking story of a hard scrabble life as Fuller and her family try to make ends meet in a world that is turning upside down for Blacks and Whites alike. 

-Kathy Steel-Sabo