Home, Displacement and Identity in Dany Laferrière's "The Return"
Description
Host Coral Santana and Author Njamba Koffi discuss Dany Laferriere's most celebrated book since How to Make Love to a Negro, The Return.
At age 23, the narrator, Dany, hurriedly left behind the stifling heat of Port-au-Prince for the unending winter of Montreal. It was 1976, and Baby Doc Duvalier's regime had just killed one of his journalist colleagues. Thirty-three years later, a telephone call informs Dany of his father's death in New York. Windsor Laferriere had fled Haiti in the 1960s, fearing persecution for his political activities. After the funeral, Dany plans to return his father to Baraderes, the village in Haiti where he was born. It is not the body he will take, but the spirit.
Content Warning: Mentions of Colonial Destruction and Rape.




