When you read Heading South by Dany Laferreiere, you don’t think about the typical struggles that most books have such as love, death, or even finding happiness in the end. You usually associate Heading South with a “series of stark, sensuous vignettes depicting erotic transactions between characters of different races, cultures and classes” (Southern Heat, Par. 2). So it came as a surprise in Laferreiere’s short story Magic Boys on how all of these significances played a part in the development of the character Mauleon Mauleus and his goals.
In Magic Boys, you can see how race plays a significant part in this story. While the character Mauleon works hard to achieve his goals, it is also said that “to stop a Haitian from dreaming, you have to beat it out of him”. (Heading South, Page 111) How I interpreted this was that race determines if you are successful or not. It can also have one believe that if you venture out in the world if you are Haitian then it could take years for you to even have an ounce of success. It even gets to the point where if you are Haitian then you cannot be partners with one of the same race because “[you’ll] go bankrupt….or the Haitian will have you thrown in prison [and] take over your business.” (Page 112) This story makes it hard to really say that there is a level of trust of the same race. This leads you to really take a step back and think about whether you can even trust your own race because it seems as if no good will come out of it. Heading South really has the reader imagining what it would be like to partner with someone of the same race, but particularly Magic Boys makes that imagination comes to life.
So when Mauleon goes to see an American named Old Sam, you can interpret that as being considered joining up with someone of class. It seems to be safe to say that as long as you are not joining up with a Haitian, then you should be able to do anything that you put your mind up to. Since Mauleon thinks that joining up with Old Sam is the best thing to do to make his hotel business successful, he’s willing to be partners with him. He’s a little disappointed when Sam outright tells him that his business will not be successful but “[he’ll] buy the whole thing from [him] outright”. (Page 113) This made me interpret class as being that if you’re in a higher class then someone then you will try to “play” someone who’s beneath you to get what you want. So it came as a surprise to me that Mauleon turned Sam’s offer down although he knows that he could possibly be in financial ruins by declining this offer.
It seems as if for Haitians in particular, its either you have a partner, borrow more money, or just face the fact that you will go into bankruptcy, or even prison. A situation like this has me to believe that being back in Haiti is a kind of a lose-lose situation because it is safe to say that even though Mauleon had to work two different jobs, he was more “successful” in New York then Haiti. It even gets to the point where he even is imagining his chances that he has. He even believes that he has no chances of staying in Haiti and his biggest nightmare has come to life where he is “[scrambling] up a tree to escape from a tiger only to find a python sleeping in the top branches” (Page 115). This description was a power dynamic to me. It’s like fighting back your fears that if you return to your native country you are doomed to fail no matter which way you go. When you escape one challenge, another is waiting for you at the top. Power seems to mean everything in Heading South because it seems as if the more power that you have the more chances you have at surviving. Like Mauleon seems to think when someone who has more power than you “will attack at the first sign of weakness and swallow [you] whole” (Page 115). It also seems as if gender and power dynamics go hand in hand with one another. It seems as if you are a male in Haiti you are more likely to have more power than a female inn Haiti