Whiteman [Paperback]

Tony D'Souza (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 9, 2007

In an Ivory Coast village where Christians and Muslims are squaring off for war, against a backdrop of bloody conflict and vibrant African life, Jack Diaz—an American relief worker—and Mamadou, his village guardian, learn that hate knows no color and that true heroism waits where we least expect it.

During lulls in the violence, Jack learns the cycles of Africa—of hunting in the rain forest, cultivating the yam, and navigating the nuances of the language; of witchcraft, storytelling, and chivalry. Despite the omnipresence of AIDS, he courts a stunning Peul girl, meets his neighbor’s wife in the darkened forest, and desperately pursues the village flirt. Still, Jack spends many nights alone in his hut, longing for love in a place where his skin color excludes him.

Brimming with dangerous passions and the pressures of life in a time of war, Whiteman is a stunning debut and a tale of desire, isolation, humor, action, and fear.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A young American aid worker doing a three-year stint in a rural West African village works through his dislocation, cultural and otherwise, in D'Souza's promising debut. Working for Potable Water International, Jack Diaz—known to the locals by the Islamicized name Diomondé Adama as well as the wryly derisive Whiteman—details the pulsing quotidian of Tégéso, an Ivory Coast village in the neglected Muslim north, in a funny, credible first-person voice. With a civil war between Christians and Muslims looming, PWI pulls its people, but Jack stays on without funding or affiliation, working the fields and teaching about preventing AIDS. His cultural reportage is thick ("Because I didn't have a wife or children, I wasn't a real man to the Worodougou, and I took up hunting to compensate for that"), but despite stilted exchanges with locals, the real surprise of the novel is its fearless treatment of Jack's sexual relationships with local women. No matter who he's sleeping with, though, Jack knows his stay in the volatile region is temporary. When the war finally forces Jack to flee, D'Souza (no relation to political pundit Dinesh) skillfully counterpoints Jack's sojourn with his stateside existence, yielding unexpected motivations for Jack's work and his liaisons. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Jack Diaz is a young American relief worker in a Muslim village in the Ivory Coast, part of an endeavor to bring potable water to the impoverished villagers. As it becomes more and more apparent that he cannot achieve his original goal, he drifts into various projects from hunting to farming to teaching villagers about AIDS prevention to taking up ill--advised love affairs. Tensions between Muslims and Christians mount and add to the layers of cultural and political nuances that Jack struggles to understand. Christened Whiteman by the villagers, who believe him capable of magic by virtue of his white skin, Jack feels his whiteness more than he ever has in his life. As he penetrates the culture--but never achieves complete integration--he discovers a people not as simple and uncomplicated as he had thought. With war threatening to hasten the end of his three-year commitment, Jack's affection for the region and the people heightens, and he seeks forgiveness for his privilege and ineffectiveness. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (April 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015603249X
• ISBN-13: 978-0156032490
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,104,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I got up and opened the door of my hut, and there she was, framed in the doorway like a painting . . . ", May 14, 2006

By 

Nicholas J. Cittadino "Mr. C" (Fairfield, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Whiteman (Hardcover)

I read Whiteman and couldn't put it down. I'm not much of a reader of fiction but this novel opened my eyes to Western Africa like nothing I've read before. Tony D'Souza is a rising star and this, his first novel, is a book that will live with you for weeks after. I was fortunate enough to hear Tony read portions of the book at the college where I work. My students sat for 45 minutes quiet and enthralled. I wish my words had that kind of magic. One faculty member,in fact, has decided on adopting it as one of her required readings for next semester.

You will enjoy it and it will move you.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Africa and all its contradictions, April 27, 2006

By 

Dead Leaf (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whiteman (Hardcover)

This book presents a segment of war-torn, third-world Africa and all its contradictions. Africa and its peoples are seen at their best and their worst - ignorant yet wise, ruthless yet compassionate, impoverished yet resourceful, war-scarred but hopeful. The tales told through the eyes of an outsider, American relief worker Jack Diaz, are compelling and thought-provoking on many different levels - this is the book's strength. To me, the book's weakness is Diaz as a main character. He is aimless, incredibly and shamelessly irresponsible, without his own moral compass, and has absolutely no idea what he is doing in Africa. A "perfect" or saintly main character would have been unbelievable and annoyingly patronizing, but Diaz's flaws overshadowed and distracted from what I believe to have been the strength of the insight into the lives of this war-torn region.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Le blanc la, c'est un fou!, December 27, 2007

By 

Blair (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Whiteman (Paperback)

I don't know how much of this book is fictionalized and how much is based on reality, but it makes Tony D'Souza out to either be the best or worst Peace Corps volunteer ever. As an RPCV myself (Cameroon, 2005-2007), I read this book with a heavy sense of recognition of themes from my own service in francophone Africa - fufu and peanut sauce outside your neighbor's hut, for example, or the constant juxtaposition between the expansive grandeur of the African sky and the monotony and grinding pettiness of daily life on the ground. D'Souza made me remember much of that.

For someone with no experience living in Africa, this is an entertaining and, at times, bewildering book. For those that do, it's still very funny, but sometimes also has a poignancy that stems from the emotional honesty of its author. Tu as bien fait, Adama.