BROTHER IN THE BUSH: An African American's Search for Self in East Africa

Slaughter recounts his 1993 killing of an intruder in his Baltimore row house and how that set him on a path of spiritual awakening while on safari in East Africa. An African-American, Slaughter feels aggrieved and shortchanged by the state of race relations in America. In Africa, he finds peace: "This communal society is content to get along... they could teach me much." Yet Slaughter fails to offer fresh insight or place his experience in any kind of economic context. Back home, Slaughter, a successful stockbroker who made his first trip to Africa at 38, will park his "dark-green Land Rover Discovery" at his farmhouse in western Maryland, pull off his "mud-soaked Wellingtons," light a cigar and start "puffing out rings and watching them cartwheel slowly towards the ceiling." Ignoring the abject poverty and brutal violence that is everyday life for many Africans and not reflecting on his own place of privilege—his father was president of the University of Maryland—Slaughter fails to distance himself from places like "Dik-Dik, the luxury Swiss lodge" in East Africa. Instead of getting into the real lives of Africans, this memoir/travelogue instead comes off as a cynical promotional brochure for Slaughter's new business: leading safaris in Africa. Agent, Jim Trupin. (May)