He Sleeps

by Reginald McKnight

Bertrand, a young African-American anthropologist, has ostensibly come to Senegal to do field research. In truth, he left his home in Denver to gain a fresh perspective on his troubled marriage. Struggling to fit in with his new Senegalese family--Alaine, his wife Kene, and their young daughter--Bertrand finds himself, for the first time in his life, haunted by surreal and increasingly violent dreams. His waking hours are no less sinister; unwittingly, it seems, Bertrand has become caught in the tension--sexual and otherwise--building between the married couple.

Genres: Africa, Fiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 2001

Reviews

[Billie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a love-hate relationships with this book. I was alternately fascinated, bored, frustrated, and angered. I thought that a lot of what McKnight was doing with issues of racial and sexual identity were quite creative, and I liked the way he played with the western world's stereotypes of Africa. But while I sympathized with the protagonist in many places, at times he was just so thick-headed (and a stunningly bad anthropologist). And the final "pay-off" was sad but ultimately not entirely believable for me. I mean, ultimately, this is a character who suffers because he is unable to be honest with himself and those around him, which is sad. But he is naive about relationships in a way that is hard to believe for a man of his age. (Or maybe that's part of the point.)

I guess I'm still trying to figure out what I think about this one...

[Michael Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Reginald McKnights’s He Sleeps, Bertrand Moreland, an African American anthropologist in a village outside Dakar, Senegal, is held captive by dreams. Writing in various letters, field notes, journal-entries, he reveals an unraveling of self while conducting research abroad. In his final letter to his soon-to-be divorced wife he admits, "I let other people's nightmares poison my dreams" (p. 209). The text, leading up to this admonition is a revealing of both Bert’s poisoned captivity in the antiblackness of America, but also its poisonous and captive effect throughout his stay in Senegal conducting research and writing his dissertation. Throughout it all, Bert is held captive by poisoned dreams. Dreaming, however, is something that he rarely experienced--or remembered--until he arrived in Senegal (That is except one dream from his undergraduate experience where his friend Kevin and he dreams out a dream in real life together). McKnight bends reality in this way and it is an important way of comprehending the remainder of the text. This is because both the Senegalese men in his life and Kene, the Senegalese-French woman that he lusts after, seek to conjure control over his dreams. All the while, Bert comes to embody one of the folklores he studies—the tale of the cock thief. This folklore is especially poignant for Bert because of his ever-present "feeling of inferiority" (p. 148) in his life when in the presence of Black women. It appears that Bert's original desire for coming to Senegal was to overcome this feeling of inferiority by sleeping with a Senegalese woman. In this way, Bert simultaneously places a magical emphasis on his penis while also objectifying and degrading Senegalese women as a suitable means to overcoming his inferiority. As Doudou, a critic of Bert states, “you think you can come here and bathe in our primitive dye, legitimize your blackness to the folks back home” (p. 113). While his greatest desire is “to be in a relationship that the world wouldn’t despise,” Bert embodies a colonizer primitiveness that views the Senegalese people as primitive and a magical means to conquering his own feelings of inferiority (p. 201). In this way, Bert is portrayed as one who poisonously lives in fear of inferiority, seeks to conquer his fear via a magical sexual conquest that simultaneously divinizes and objectifies Black women, and in doing so, is revealed to be held captive to and the perpetrator of the continued nightmare of colonialism.

[Mitchel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An original and well crafted psycho-social thriller. Like "Rosemary's Baby" but set in Senegal.

[Devin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was absolutely amazed by this novel. The characters, the technical aspects of the writing, the struggle for racial identity, and the tension were all great. It was a really visceral novel. The best novel I read in 2010

[Michelle Peet · Rating 2 out of 5]

This looked pretty interesting by the cover, and as it's a local author, I kept hoping to enjoy it more....but it was disappointing.

[K M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow- this was very different- quite surreal and intense. Hard to describe, but gripping, in a subtle, psychological way.