Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey [Hardcover]

Ariel Dorfman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1998

In this new edition of his remarkable memoir, for which he has written a special introduction for South African readers, Ariel Dorfman describes an extraordinary life, torn between the United States, South America, and his Jewish heritage, between English and Spanish, between revolution and repression.Interwoven with the story of how Dorfman switched languages and countries – not once, but three times – is a day-to-day account of his multiple escapes from death during Pinochet’s military takeover in Chile in 1973.A beautifully written autobiography by one of the ‘greatest living Latin American writers’ (Newsweek), Heading South, Looking North is a moving account of Dorfman’s complex life as well as an elegant reflection on language, exile and memory.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ariel Dorfman is no stranger to exile. Before his 30th birthday, he had fled with his parents (Jews who had escaped from Eastern Europe) from Argentina to the U.S. and then later to Chile. Then, following a military coup, he fled Chile for a stint in Europe before returning to the U.S. For Dorfman, this was not traveling but enduring, as his forced movement between nations, cultures, and languages left him without a place to call home or a culture he could completely define as his own. Although heralded as one of Latin America's leading writers, he once renounced the Spanish language and swore to become an American in both speech and culture. Later, while a student at Berkeley, he abandoned English with the same vengeance and returned to his native Spanish. Such vacillation caused him to ponder the role of language in forming identity, and this theme runs throughout Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey. His desire to embrace his Latin roots went beyond language, however, for it was politics that ultimately thrust him into the role of a writer, thus changing his life. He had wanted to be a part of the American protest movement, but he feared the official wrath that could befall him due to his immigrant status: "This seemed to be my fate. In Chile, I had been Argentinean; here, I was Chilean; always the danger of deportation, my foreign passport weighing down on me. So I looked on while heads were broken, sit-ins were disrupted, and damsels in distress were dragged off by the 'pigs.' ... My participation was always surreptitious and oblique...." But in Chile his involvement took a more active stance. His status as official citizen emboldened him and he enthusiastically embraced Salvador Allende's socialist movement, serving for a time as the administration's communications and media advisor; a choice that eventually earned him yet another round of exile back in the U.S. (where he continues to reside) after the death of Allende and the rise of General Augusto Pinochet. A remarkable story of perseverance and the inherent power of language, Heading South, Looking North is ultimately a quest for self-identity. The fact that he wrote this book in English may answer the question of where he stands--for now. --Shawn Carkonen

From Publishers Weekly

The details of this artfully constructed memoir by a Chilean novelist probably best known in this country for his play Death and the Maiden are dramatic, but what makes the book remarkable is its continuing meditation on language and its role in forging identity. When Dorfman was born in Argentina in 1942, his Jewish parents, who had fled Russia, named him Vladimiro in honor of Lenin. In 1945, they moved to New York City, where their son (who adopted the name Edward) refused to speak Spanish and became a believer in popular American culture, even rooting for his father's enemy, Peron, because as long as Juan and Evita remained in power, the Dorfmans would never return to Buenos Aires. In 1955, under pressure from Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Dorfman's father left his job at the U.N. and took his family to Chile, where "Edward" attended an English school. After college, he went north again in 1968 to study at Berkeley and returned to Chile in 1970 to be part of Salvador Allende's socialist government. Three years later, Allende was dead, the country was in the midst of a military putsch and Dorfman was fleeing for his life, back to North America. In alternating chapters, the author relates what happened when Allende was overthrown and the story of his own life and how it was shaped by the language he was speaking. Dorfman at times seems more concerned with writing a "literary" work than with telling a story, but as the book goes on, the self-conscious flourishes diminish and the result is an astonishing portrait of the shaping of a life.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 282 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T); 1st edition (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374168628
• ISBN-13: 978-0374168629
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,669,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A passionate look at bilingualism, May 6, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (West Lafayette, Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey (Paperback)

This is a great book. I have seldom read a book that is so honest and, at the same time, so full of sound and fury. Yes, it is highly idiosyncratic, especially when Dorfman tries to explain his reasons for chosing English over Spanish and vice versa, but, at the same time, it is written with such passion that one cannot help sympathizing with him. Being bilingual myself, going from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English every single day of my life, being an expatriate yearning for the lost paradise of my birth and childhood, I found in Dorfman's "Heading south, looking north" many of the encountered feelings that a person who participates in two cultures has--and I rejoiced in that I was not alone in my feelings.

But, apart from being a passionate meditation on the virtues and 'ravages' of bilingualism, "Heading south, looking north" is a corageous book full of the ironies that make up life and a hymn to the Allende revolution in Chile. There is much to be gained from his soul searching, much to be learned from his criticism of the revolution that he loves so much (yes, I think it's appropriate to use the present tense), and, above all, much to be admired from this singular journey. I highly recommend this book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pivotal moments, January 24, 2004

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey (Hardcover)

This book is the internal memoirs of a man whose defining moments were exile from his homelands and his languages. Exile was a longstanding way of life in Dorfman's family, from his grandparents who had to leave Eastern Europe, to his parents who had to flee both Argentina and the US, and now Dorfman himself, who was forced into asylum after the fall of Allende in Chile. But exile is more of a secondary or co-theme of this book. The other major theme is Dorfman's search for identity through his languages. Throughout the book, Dorfman describes how he came to know language, and the identity traits that go along with a language. He also describes how he came to choose which of his two languages, English and Spanish, to use in different contexts and to consciously construct different identities.

Rather than tell his story chronologically, Dorfman works from a repertoire of pivotal moments. He has asked himself, when and why did I first start using English? When did I begin to write? When did I embrace the philosophy of non-violence? He then describes these episodes in detail, and speculates and philosophizes on them. The story of Dorfman's political activities in Chile and what happened to him during the coup constitute about half of the book, with these political chapters alternating with chapters about the other significant events in his life. The bouncing back-and-forth between time periods moves almost smoothly, like the thought patterns of an insomniac reflecting back at the end of a busy day.

I found many aspects of this book quite interesting. The first-person account of bilingualism, and its ties to a conflicted identity were described very clearly. The inside perspective on the Allende regime and its fall was also informative. What was particularly telling was the speculation on why the regime lost popularity amongst the Chilean people- -how Dorfman himself shamed people who were celebrating the Allende victory with a right-wing singer who was trying to mend fences, and told them the singer was not welcome in the revolution, or how he didn't reach out to a neighbor whose job was jeopardized and then lost because he wasn't an Allendista. Another aspect of this story that I found intriguing was Dorfman's identity as a gringo English speaker brought to Chile against his will as a young teenager, who came to adopt the country and become active in its politics. I couldn't help but think of another young man, Michael Townley, who was also brought by his American family to Santiago in his teenage years, and also learned the language, married a local girl, and wanted to call Chile his permanent home. But Townley was on the other side of the revolution, and became a right-wing terrorist working for the Chilean intelligence forces. Did Dorfman ever encounter Townley? Of course, Dorfman wasn't actually American- -he was an Argentinean who spent a significant portion of his childhood in the US, but he looked and spoke the part. How many other young Americans adopted Chile during this period? What was their combined influence on Chilean politics?

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Triumph, October 28, 2000

By 

shan1212 "shan1212" (Cherry Hill, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey (Paperback)

Ariel Dorfman manages to express in the words of only one language the treason which two languages coexisting within him create. He traces his own working through pain and developing of identity in the dichotomy of his culturalism and sheds an almost joyfully existential light on the blind forces which bless some and curse others. Heading South, Looking North may be above the heads of the less literary (i.e. some of the previous reviews), but it is a triumph and should be enjoyed by any reader willing to find himself in the spaces between language, culture, and politics.