How to Make Love to a Negro

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

Here is a book that deserves a fanfare of introduction. It is a truly satisfying and enjoyable read and a cynical, satiric swipe at radical chic and the myth of the black stud. Most of the humour plays off against sexual stereotypes. Of the fate of white women who sleep with black men, for example, he observes that “it’s happened before: young, white, Protestant Anglo-Saxon girls sleep with a Negro and wake up under a baobab tree in the middle of the bush, talking over family affairs with the village women” (pp. 62-63). He gains a small measure of revenge by depersonalizing the white, English-speaking women that he sleeps with by denying them names and classifying them by personal quirks or interests. There are, among others, Miz Literature, Miz Suicide, and Miz Clockwork Orange.

Wit pervades this book. Many of the chapter titles, for example, contain literary jokes — “The Nigger Narcissus” and “The Negroes are Thirsty” — or they mock serious studies of race relationships: “The Black Penis and the Demoralization of the Western World.” The role of Laferiere as artist is satirized when, near the end, he fantasizes over his novel as a vehicle for amassing personal wealth rather than as a vehicle for promoting social change. The role of art as revolutionary script is also made fun of: “David Fennario is currently translating it [his book] into English [he fantasizesl, and plans to adapt it into a play he’ll call ‘Negroville’” (p.110).

How to Make Love to a Negro marks the entrance of an exciting talent into Canadian writing. Read it.