Dany Laferrière fled Haiti after his journalisitc collaborator was killed.

As a journalist, novelist, screenwriter and filmmaker, Dany Laferrière often explores different themes, including race relations and ethnocentrism, societal taboos and life in Haiti. He writes in French, although much of his work is translated into other languages.

Born in Haiti, Laferrière left his native country when a fellow journalist he was collaborating with on a story was killed. He moved to Montreal, where he published his first novel —How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired. He has also been involved in a number of films. Translated into English by Wayne Grady, Laferrière latest book, Heading South, is set in Port-au-Prince, Haiti during the 1970s,

“The images of Haiti surface from the years I spent in Haiti, from my youth, my adolescence, my time there as a fearless young journalist,” says Laferrière, speaking by phone from Bali, Indonesia.

There are many different voices featured in Heading South, starting with Fafan, a young Haitian boy with a particular knack for understanding (and often seducing) women. The narrative then switches. At different points we met Brenda and Ellen, visitors to Port-au-Prince, as well as many others characters who balance their happiness with their need to survive.

“When you arrive at Port-au-Prince, the first thing that hits you is the commotion,” says Laferrière. “Everyone will attempt to speak to you. The spoken word is the only thing you may share with someone else in Haiti because it is free and because the country is so poor.”

“We also live by our abilities to express ourselves,” he continues. “This is why just one unique narrator could not capture the diversity of the place. When I recall my childhood in a small village in south Haiti, if I hear one voice, that’s my own. But I wanted to describe Port-au-Prince — to show the same intensity, the same fever that one finds when visiting another country. At first, that’s what (my female characters) were looking for — the life energy from this place. The life energy in the young men, but also in the energy of the city itself. That’s Port-au-Prince – the personalities are principle to this romance, with their colours, their scents, their flavours. Comme dans un tableau primitif.”

Writing from the perspective of the opposite gender could raise criticism, but Laferrière isn’t sure it’s justified. “When I write I am neither male nor female, but I am a writer. I chose to become a writer because literature erases barriers such as class, race, sex and religion.”

“I write to cast off the shingles from the roofs of houses (to free ideas), like the dreams I had in my childhood.”

Thematically, the characters in Heading South deal with issues surrounding sexual relations, as well as economic status and distribution of wealth. By Laferrière’s assertion, it gives a small glimpse into what was happening in Haiti around the ’70s.

“This was a time where an economic boom was surfacing. We went out of the darkness of Papa Doc’s (François Duvalier’s) dictatorship and the boys wanted a change. In the end they wanted Port-au-Prince to be a city of pleasure. Men wanted to dance, to amuse themselves a little. This all happened after we’d taken a glimpse of what sort of political repression we’d had. However, the repression continued… In the end, the economic situation was not changed for the better. And that is why the repression came back.”

A film called Heading South, made in 2005, was adapted from three of Laferrière’s short stories.