Archive - 2012

The African American Odyssey of John Kizell: A South Carolina Slave Returns to Fight the Slave Trade in His African Homeland by Kevin G. Lowther (Sierra Leone 1963–65) The University of South Carolina Press $39.95 (hardcover) Kindle & Nook $15. 326 pages May 2011 Reviewed by Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002–04) JOHN KIZELL LIVED A LIFE THAT could easily read as fiction. Born in West Africa in about 1760, he was falsely accused of witchcraft in his home village in order to dispose of him as a slave. He survived the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic (one in five of his fellow captives perished) and was purchased in Charleston, South Carolina, on the eve of the American Revolution. During the war, he took up arms as a loyalist, believing this the best path to freedom. In payment, he and a number of other black loyalists were evacuated by the British . . .

The Sunday New York Times Book Review section on May 20, 2012,  has a review of Paul Theroux’s (Malawi 1963-65) novel, The Lower River. Reviewer Patrick McGrath sums up: The Lower River is riveting in its storytelling and provocative in its depiction of this African backwater, infusing both with undertones of slavery and cannibalism, savagery and disease. Theroux exposes the paternalism of Hock’s Peace Corps nostalgia, his “sense of responsibility, almost the conceit of ownership.” That sense of responsibility, and Hock’s modest contribution to the welfare of a people he was once genuinely fond of, has been replaced by a harsher mode of operation, run by hardhearted contractors living apart in impregnable compounds. “I have to leave,” Hock pleads. “I’m going home.” To which the village headman replies, with chilling menace, “This is your home, father.”

[George Packer (Togo 1982-83) put up this item yesterday on The New Yorker website. It is really a smart piece on presidents, vice presidents, and how history repeats itself.] In one of those coincidences that get you thinking in historical analogies, President Obama announced support for same-sex marriage just a few days after the publication of Robert Caro’s fourth volume on the life of Lyndon B. Johnson, “The Passage of Power.” Obama arrived at his position in very much the way that John F. Kennedy decided to put the force of the White House behind civil rights: slowly, reluctantly, and with a big assist from his overlooked, often ridiculed Vice-President. I spent the summer of 1980 as an intern at a legal-aid office in southern Alabama, and in the houses of poor black people I got used to seeing a sign on the wall that said, “The three who set . . .

Before Peter Hessler was awarded a “genius” grant by the MacArthur Foundation, and before he was a PCV in China (1996-98), he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Of that time, he writes in the current issue of The New Yorker, (May 21, 2012). He found part-time work standing in police lineups. At the time he was reading, as they say at Oxford, English Language and Literature, and his courses included tutorials on Middle English, Spenser, Shakespeare, the seventeenth century, and the eighteenth century. At the start of the Michaelmas term, he saw a notice that the St. Aldates Police Station was looking for volunteers to stand in identity parades. They paid ten pounds per parade. So Peter went down to the station and signed up. His first parade was for stealing bikes. The station hadn’t finished constructing its viewing room, which would feature a one-way mirror. For the time being, . . .

It would take the lengthy pages of The New York Review of Books(June 7, 2012) to bring these two old Peace Corps African hands together, with one reviewing the other. Theroux’s book, The Lower River, is out this month from Houghton Mifflin, and here’s the basic plot: “Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again. Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built . . .

“The Playground by Terrence M. McCoy (Cambodia 2009-11) was reviewed in the Washington Post today, Sunday, May 11, 2012 by Steven Levingston. Levingston writes: Kindle Singles is a 15-month-old e-book venture from Amazon that strives to publish original fiction and nonfiction works at Goldilocks length: not too long, not too short but just right. Its Web site lays out the ambition: “Compelling Ideas Expressed at Their Natural Length.” The books, as short as David Baldacci’s 15-page story “No Time Left” or as long as Dean Koontz’s 102-page “The Moonlit Mind,” are vetted, accepted (or rejected) and edited by David Blum and put on sale at the very modern price of 99 cents to $4.99. Kindle Singles isn’t just for brand-name authors. It serves its greatest purpose by showcasing the work of unknown authors of exceptional ability, such as the journalist Terrence M. McCoy. His just-released book, “The Playground” is an ire-inspiring . . .

Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996-97) is the author of Extra Lives, Chasing the Sea, God Lives in St. Petersburg, and The Father of All Things. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Bay de Noc Community College Alumnus of the Year Award. He lives in Los Angeles, but knowing Tom, he might not be there long. When we were last in touch, he was teaching in Portland, Oregon. Previous to that, he lived in New York City, Ho Chi Minh City, Rome, Las Vegas, and Tallinn. And this is a guy who is from the middle of nowhere, Escanaba, Michigan. What keeps him on the move is his writing and research. Tom has just published a new collection of essays that “explores the highs and lows of the creative process.” He takes us from the set of The Big Bang Theory to the first novel . . .