In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller looks back with happiness and also anger at her family and the extraordinary time and placed they lived.  Her life in Africa took place in a bubble of Anglocentricity. She saw Africans as servants and terrorists and did not even take notice to their culture.  Though Fuller comes to a realization that she is African by “accident” and not by birth, Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight is a love story for Africa and all the black men and women who “at the expense of so
many remained voiceless”  (1).
      The writing is incredibly effective specifically with the use of the three appeals and structure.  Fuller  uses a timeline and tells the dates of important events to move the story along and to establish ethos.   Her diction establishes pathos, including the nearly continuous dialogue and racial remarks to emphasize the negative atmosphere in Africa caused by white supremacists.  Fuller organizes her memoir by stepping back in time as a child and then going forward to being an adult.  This organization keeps the story interesting and allows even more reflection as she places current aspects of her life against moments in her childhood.
     Fuller uses informal language and concrete word choice.  The detail of the memoir includes facts of the happenings where she lived: “In March 1978, Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa of the African National Council makes an agreement with the while government…” (2).  Detail is also used in incidents: “She is floating facedown in the pond.  The ducks are used to her body by now, paddling and waddling around it, throwing back their heads and drinking the water that is full of her last breaths” (3). Fuller uses a lot of imagery: “What I can’t know about Africa as a child is her smell: hot, sweet, smoky, salty, sharp-soft.  It is like black tea, cut tobacco, fresh fire, old sweat, young grass” (4) also, “There is only one time of absolute silence.  This silence is how I know it is not yet dawn, nor is it the middle of the night, but it is the place of no-time, when all things sleep most deeply…” (5). The grammatical sentence structure is mainly long and descriptive sentences, lots of dialogue and words in the African language Nyanja.  The memoir is told in a child’s perspective and the tone is mostly light and happy as Fuller finds a way to laugh, even when there is nothing to celebrate.


Fuller, Alexandra. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood. New York: Random   House, 2001. Print.