Farewell, Fred Voodoo - by Amy Wilentz (Paperback)

About the Book

Describes the author's long and painful relationship with Haiti before and after the 2010 earthquake, tracing the country's turbulent history and its status as a symbol of human rights activism and social transformation.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, this is a brilliant writer's account of a long, painful, ecstatic--and unreciprocated--affair with a country that has long fascinated the world.

A foreign correspondent on a simple story becomes, over time and in the pages of this book, a lover of Haiti, pursuing the heart of this beautiful and confounding land into its darkest corners and brightest clearings. Farewell, Fred Voodoo is a journey into the depths of the human soul as well as a vivid portrayal of the nation's extraordinary people and their uncanny resilience. Haiti has found in Amy Wilentz an author of astonishing wit, sympathy, and eloquence.

Review Quotes

"Farewell, Fred Voodoo is engrossing and gorgeous and funny, a meticulously reported story of love for a maddening place. Wilentz's writing is so lyrical it's like hearing a song - in this case, the magical, confounding, sad song of Haiti."--Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin

"Farewell, Fred Voodoo is written with authority and great affection for Haiti and Haitians and for those who are trying to help them. An informative and wonderful piece of writing, it is a work of considerable artistry, immensely evocative. I read it with pleasure and with mounting gratitude."--Tracy Kidder, author of Mountains Beyond Mountains

"Farewell, Fred Voodoo showcases all [Wilentz's] formidable gifts as a reporter: her love of, and intimate familiarity with, Haiti; her sense of historical perspective; and her eye for the revealing detail. Like Joan Didion and V. S. Naipaul, she has an ability not only to provide a visceral, physical feel for a place, but also to communicate an existential sense of what it's like to be there as a journalist with a very specific and sometimes highly subjective relationship with her subject."--Michiko Kakutani "The New York Times"

"A veteran journalist captures the functioning chaos of Haiti. ... An extraordinarily frank cultural study/memoir that eschews platitudes of both tragedy and hope."-- "Kirkus Reviews, starred review"

"Amy Wilentz is a brilliant writer, an ace journalist and, perhaps most important, she is not an outsider. She's the perfect guide through the heartbreak and beauty of post-earthquake Haiti. I was gripped by her respectful and first-hand reporting on Voodoo, and impressed by her enormous sensitivity to the crushing deprivation most Haitians endure."--Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

"Amy Wilentz knows Haiti deeply: its language, its tragic history, the foibles of her fellow Americans who often miss the story there. This makes her a wise, wry, indispensable guide to a country whose fate has long been so interwoven with our own."--Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost

"Excellent and illuminating....a love letter to--and a lament for--Haiti, a country with an already strange and tortured history that became even more tragic, interesting and convoluted in the months after the earthquake.... [Wilentz] brings to Haiti empathy and her great skills as a narrator....it's Wilentz's honesty about her own role in Haiti and that of so many other American visitors to that country that ultimately distinguishes her book most from other works that cover similar terrain."-- "Los Angeles Times"

"I can't imagine there's a better book about Haiti--a smarter, more thoughtful, tough-minded, romantic, plainspoken, intimate, well-reported book. Amy Wilentz has paid exceptionally close attention to this dreamy, nightmarish place for a quarter century, and with Farewell, Fred Voodoo she turns all that careful watching and thinking into a riveting work of nonfiction literature."--Kurt Andersen, author of Heyday and True Believers