English

Our Man in Africa

Tony D'Souza's novel brings Peace Corps experiences to life

Tony D'Souza, '95, couldn't wait to get out of Carthage and begin experiencing the world. Since he graduated from the College, Mr. D'Souza has lived in Scotland, Germany, and the African countries of Ivory Coast and Madagascar, and earned two master's degrees.

"I wanted to be out in the world," says Mr. D'Souza, who took as many as 28 credits in a semester. "Before I got to Carthage, I bicycled across Alaska."

Tony D'Souza reads from his novel, "Whiteman," during a visit to Carthage.

Mr. D'Souza first novel, “Whiteman,” was published in spring 2006 by Harcourt, and excerpted in The New Yorker and Playboy.

“Whiteman” is about an American relief worker in a Muslim village in Africa. The setting is the current-day Ivory Coast, as a civil war between Muslims and Christians begins.

“It’s fiction, but loosely based on real experiences,” says Mr. D’Souza, who served three years in Africa with the Peace Corps, as an AIDS educator in a village of 700 people.

“They give you a pat on the back, say ‘good luck,’ and you’re on your own, the only Westerner in a village,” he says. After being forced to flee by a civil war, “transition back to this life was just as hard.”

'A formative experience for me'

The Chicago native was recruited to play tennis and wrestle at Carthage.

“I made the (tennis) team, but I decided to pursue academics instead,” Mr. D’Souza recalls. “I know the coach (John Coursey) wasn’t too happy, but I made the right decision. I was introduced to writing at Carthage and met some of my best friends. Carthage was a formative experience for me.”

At the College, Mr. D’Souza was production editor of the student newspaper. He spent one summer in India, and another on a kibbutz in Israel. The latter followed an internship at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Washington, D. C.

After graduating in three years with a degree in English, Mr. D’Souza took an internship at a London bank, but says of that experience, “I hated it.” But he wanted to visit Scotland, and when he decided he wanted to stay a while, worked construction there for eight months.

Mr. D’Souza then made his way to Germany, where he began writing fiction. His short stories and poetry have been published in five countries.

“The stuff I wrote (in Germany) wasn’t very good, but it got me into graduate school with a full ride,” Mr. D’Souza says.

The “full ride” was at Hollins University in Roanoke, Va., where he was one of four males at an otherwise all-female institution. Mr. D’Souza earned a master’s degree at Hollins in 1998, and another master’s at the University of Notre Dame in 2000.

Living in Turmoil

From Notre Dame, Mr. D’Souza headed for the Ivory Coast, once one of Africa’s more prosperous countries after the end of colonial rule in the 1960s. But discord between Christians and Muslims grew in the 1990s after the death of strongman president Felix Houphouet-Boigny. A civil war broke out in 2002, and while fighting ended a year later, the northern, predominantly Muslim part of the country remains under rebel control. French troops and United Nations peacekeepers patrol a buffer zone.

“I lived in a hut, no electricity, no running water, and the country was in political turmoil,” Mr. D’Souza says. “Just a couple months before I got there, the country had its first coup.”

Gen. Robert Guei took power in the coup, although he was ousted less than a year later amid charges of election-rigging. In 2002, Guei and 14 members of his household were killed just prior to the outbreak of war.

During this period, Mr. D’Souza recalls the establishment of “instant justice,” mainly in the capital city of Abidjan. “Anyone caught breaking curfew, or thieves, were shot on sight with no trial,” he says. “The bodies were left on the street as a warning.”

Abidjan, however, was a two-day journey from the village where Mr. D’Souza stayed.

“My village was safe,” he says. “They hated the government.” But, he adds, “once the fighting would get to my area, I would be a definite target. There’s no way (villagers) could hide me.”

The Experience of Escape

When Mr. D’Souza left the Ivory Coast in 2002, “I had to leave with just the clothes on my back,” he says, leaving behind numerous short stories he had written. The Peace Corps sent volunteers a coded message to leave over the British Broadcasting Corp.

“It said, ‘The annual conference is about to start.’ When we heard that, we knew we had to leave, or we were on our own. I didn’t want to be on my own.”

The story of the escape is told in Mr. D’Souza’s novel.

“I spent eight days in the city of Segeula with other volunteers,” he says. “The city was under siege, with no electricity, running water, food or telephones. We got out one morning, the rebels took the city that night.”

Although Mr. D’Souza had to leave behind numerous short stories he had written, he has no regrets about spending three years in a remote village.

“What I lost was paper,” he said. “People around me lost their lives.” Furthermore, “I knew if I took a nine-to-five job, I wouldn’t have the energy to do my art at night.”

Consumed by Writing

The path that led Mr. D’Souza to a publishing contract began in Africa, where a Peace Corps colleague put him in touch with New York literary agent Liz Dahransoff. The agent was impressed with Mr. D’Souza’s short stories and urged him to write a novel. Mr. D’Souza started writing “Whiteman” in July 2004, and completed his manuscript by Thanksgiving.

“Within a couple of weeks, the story consumed me,” he says. “By the end I was writing 12 hours a day. I would hole up in my apartment for whole weekends.”

Mr. D’Souza reports that five publishing houses were interested in his book.

“Within two weeks we got it sold,” he adds.

Mr. D’Souza spent the last six months of his Peace Corps tenure on the island of Madagascar, before returning to the U.S. in 2003, then taught composition and creative writing for two years at Shasta College in Redding, Calif., a junior college less than an hour from California’s northern boundary.

“I enjoyed being around the students, but I didn’t like the workload,” he says frankly. “I was looking at having more than 100 students, with an essay to grade for each one every two weeks. I’m not complaining, that’s the reality young writers face these days.”

Mr. D’Souza estimates that 95 percent of serious fiction writers support themselves by teaching. Aside from The New Yorker, Playboy and Esquire, most serious fiction is published in academic journals.

“Academic journals don’t pay much, but they’re prestigious, and (being published there) gets you teaching jobs,” Mr. D’Souza observes, adding that such journals “are almost as hard to get into as The New Yorker.”

The author says he received a five-figure advance from Harcourt, as well as money from The New Yorker and Playboy.

“I don’t need to look at going back (to teaching) for a few years,” Mr. D’Souza says. But he stresses that “you don’t get into this thinking about trips to Hawaii you’re going to take. You do it because you love it.”

Visit to Carthage

In April 2006, Mr. D’Souza, ’95, visited campus as part of a 20-city tour promoting “Whiteman”. He has remained in touch with Carthage president F. Gregory Campbell, whom he came to know while studying at the College.

“Greg was a mentor to me,” Mr. D’Souza says. “In some ways he took me under his wing.”

Mr. D’Souza already had been praised in a New York Times review for “his ability to present experiences of African life with a vividness that reveals the continent’s allure without sentimentalizing its exoticism.” In People, critic Francine Prose lauded “D’Souza’s understanding of what it’s like to fall in love with people who will never be like you, with a place that will never be home.”

“That’s a surreal thing, to see yourself in People magazine,” Mr. D’ Souza told the 50 or so people at the Niemann Media Theater in Hedberg Library.

But this was different from the usual stop on the tour, because Mr. D’Souza was among friends, not strangers. There was less need to promote “Whiteman” and more opportunity to discuss influences on his personality and writing.

“In lots of ways, Tony D’Souza embodies our idea of a liberal arts education,” said Allan Wallace, director of the writing development program and assistant professor of English, as he introduced the visitor.

Mr. D’Souza joked that “I was a Peace Corps baby,” since his mother had been a volunteer in India, where she met his father.

Favorite Authors Today

Asked about his favorite current authors, Mr. D’Souza mentioned Cormac McCarthy, J. M. Coetzee and Portuguese author Jose Saramago.

“They’re entertaining, yet they deal with the heaviest issues,” he explained, “race, the desecration of the environment, mortality, the meaning of life itself. Lesser writers won’t do that.”

As for authors he believes influenced his style, Mr. D’Souza mentioned Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Conrad, and Tim O’Brien. He recalled hearing Mr. O’Brien and poet Gwendolyn Brooks speak at Carthage while he attended the college.

Those authors, Mr. D’Souza said, write about themselves or characters based on themselves, when placed in exotic and/or challenging situations.

“You have to figure out who you are, what literary tradition you belong to,” he advised any prospective writers.

Since Mr. D’Souza’s visit, he has received additional favorable notice in publications from Outside to Vanity Fair. “D’Souza makes humor, danger and chaos occupy the same page like old friends, and his characters speak with a musical cadence that brings them alive,” the Arizona Republic observed.

Editor’s note: In 2008, Mr. D’Souza, received a prestigious fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. According to the foundation, “Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of stellar achievement and exceptional promise for continued accomplishment.”

Since its establishment in 1925, the Foundation has granted more than $265 million in fellowships to almost 16,500 individuals. Noteworthy past winners include Ansel Adams, W. H. Auden, Aaron Copland, Martha Graham, Langston Hughes, Henry Kissinger, Vladimir Nabokov, Isamu Noguchi, Linus Pauling, Philip Roth, Paul Samuelson, Wendy Wasserstein, Derek Walcott, James Watson, and Eudora Welty.

Also in 2008, Harcourt published Mr. D'Souza’s second novel, "The Konkans", an autobiographical tale, or at least a book with characters whose life experiences intersect with the author's real life.

The novel is named for the people of the Konkan area of India, extending north to south along the Arabian Sea. This obscure coastal region is set apart from India because of its geographic location, language (Konkani) and religion (Catholicism).

Mr. D'Souza is half-Konkan. He was raised in Chicago, which is the novel's setting. Like the narrator Francisco D'Sai, he is the son of an American mother who lived in India when she worked for the Peace Corps.

Entertainment Weekly called the book “a rich, warm, personal yarn bright with pride and love,” and called Mr. D’Souza “a savvy storyteller with a clear, soulful voice.”

The Christian Science Monitor concluded that “your only real complaint is that you’re reluctant to leave the characters.”

— Bill Kurtz, Carthage College

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