Archive - January 2013

Several times a week I get books in the mail from RPCV writers….mostly I know they are coming as I have been forewarned by the author. The other day I got one via Amazon.com that came to me without notice, no fanfare, I didn’t request it. It was a collection of poems from a guy named Ben Berman. I never heard of him. The jacket cover suggested Africa. When I looked closer I saw that it was an image entitled, The Unnamed by Petros of Harare, Zimbabwe. On the author page, sure enough there was black-and-white photo of young Ben Berman, and a short biographical paragraph saying that he grew up in Maine and served in Zimbabwe. Now, for some reason we don’t have many writers who were PCVs in Zimbabwe (is it because of the water?) Nor, for that matter, do we have many RPCV poets. This collection of poems . . .

            Sunday Morning July 2, 1961 The road home was flat. Miss Mary drove. The old hunter, watching The distant hills, Small breasts against the plains, Thought of Kenya, the rugged Mountains, where death was Close as brush, Gentler than the Slow defacing of flesh. He wrote of sin as no small town Methodist ever had, Carving his prose with a new King of tool; Honed in the woods of Michigan, Sharpened by a fascist war, And tempered for an old man of Cuba. Fragile as the light birds he Picked from the sky Decades and miles away, He no longer heard the call. Pencils now were hollow in his hands, The juice that flowed so ready Had yellowed in his veins. He was what Gertrude had proclaimed. Sunday he woke to our tragedy, Sought in the library of his exile His own Kilimanjaro. Feeling . . .

[Peter Tinti (Mali 2008-10) is a freelance journalist, writer and analyst splitting time between Bamako, Mali and Dakar, Senegal. He writes and reports on issues pertaining to politics, culture and security in West Africa and the Maghreb. He has lived and worked in the region since 2008, first as a PCV in Gao, northern Mali. He holds an MA in International Peace and Security from King’s College London as well as degrees in Political Science and Peace War & Defense from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Among other outlets, Tinti’s writing, reporting and analysis has appeared in Think Africa Press, World Politics Review, Christian Science Monitor, BBC, and Voice of America. This is from CS Monitor, published on January 13, 2013. With French airstrikes, has the war to retake northern Mali begun? Today’s expansion of the French air campaign beyond central Mali has left many wondering if . . .

The world news is full of stories of ‘what’s happening in Mali?’ from the French airstrikes, to the Islamist rebels taking over of Mali villages, to the US involvement, to the 3,300 soldiers from other West African nations who are now fighting alongside the Malian Army. The Op-Ed page of The New York Times this morning (January 15, 2013) has an essay entitled, “Why We Must Help Save Mali” written by Vicki Huddleston, the U.S. ambassador to Mail from 2002-2005, and a former deputy assistant secretary in the State and Defense Departments. Luckily for RPCVs we have our own expert, Peter Chilson (Niger 1985-87), who teaches creative writing at Washington State University and writes about West African, and lately about Mali. Here’s a  blurb for his new book on the nation. The book is entitled, We Never Know Exactly Where. “What happens when a country suddenly splits in two? In . . .

Somalia: Short Fiction by Martin R. Ganzglass (Somalia 1966-68) Peace Corps Writers,$7.99 (paperback); $2.99 (Kindle) 356 pages 2012 Reviewed by Baker H. Morrow (Somalia 1968-69) In this book of stories about Somalia set mostly in the sixties, Martin Ganzglass (Somalia 1966-68) works hard to give us a taste of the place: the names of the famous old hotels (the Croce del Sud and the Giuba in Mogadiscio), the nicknames that the Somalis love to hang about the necks of friend and enemy alike (Af-Chir/Mouse Mouth; Bashir Goray/the Ostrich), and gritty place descriptions (the Mad Mullah’s fort at Taleh in the North; the ruins of Mogadiscio in the nineties, the era of the warlords).  He succeeds in many ways.  His characters are Italian colonials, Peace Corps types, and local people caught up in the heady days of early independence after 1960.  The problem Mr. Ganzglass wrestles with in dealing with Somalia, a . . .

The February 2013 issue of Harper’s has long reviews (for Harper’s) of three totally disconnected books. The reviews were written by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996-97). If nothing else the selection of books shows the width and depth of Bissell’s interests and knowledge. The guy is well read. Tom’s last book was Magic Hours, a collection of essays, published by McSweeny’s, published in 2012 and his name pops up from time to time in articles and reviews for other publications. The three books he reviews for Harper’s are A Jew Among Romans:The Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus written by Frederic Raphael and published by Pantheon; Detroit: An American Autopsy by journalist Charlie LeDuff, published by Penguin Press; and a new collection of stories by George Saunders: Tenth of December (Random House). You can’t open a magazine today without stumbling over some reference or review of the short stories by George Saunders, a writer that Bissell’s ranks with the . . .

Acts of God While on Vacation by Richard Tillotson (Malaysia 1967-69) CreateSpace, $14.95 (paper) $4.00 (Kindle) 370 pages May 2011     Reviewed by Rosemary Casey (Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands – TTPI 1987-89) When asked to review Acts of God While on Vacation, I should have googled it to see what others said before I made a commitment. For example, others reported the book “disarmingly flip and fast-paced” (Honolulu Star-Bulletin), and the “diversity of spiritual belief systems makes this open-minded novel as entertaining as it is enlightening” (Publishers Weekly). So I opened up Paul Tillotson’s book anticipating a good read. Unfortunately, I found myself disappointed, and I had a hard time returning to the book once I put it down, making it an “obligation” to write the review rather than a task of enjoyment. I delayed my task, until one evening I asked myself why I was procrastinating . . .

Land of the Tuk-Tuk by Henry Pelifian (Thailand 1975-77) AuthorHouse, $19.95 280 pages February 2012 Reviewed by Robert Hamilton (Ethiopia 1965-67) Henry Pelifian’s Land of the Tuk-Tuk is a compilation of several different stories sharing the same book cover.  These include: 1.     the partial story of the fictional protagonist Jack Dakasian, Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Bangkok, Thailand; 2.     the love story of Jack and his former student Amara Worathai, and Jack’s determination later to woo and marry her; 3.     the story of Jack in Isfahan, Iran, teaching helicopter repair in English to Iranian military mechanics in, it appears, 1979, and just prior to the revolution which swept the Shah from power and the return of the Muslim cleric Ali Khomeni; 4.     the story of the Armenian genocide and other atrocities inflicted upon Jack’s family in Turkey in the early 20th century and their migration to the U.S.; 5.     Jack’s outrage at . . .

The January 14, 2013 issue of The New Yorker has a long, long informative  “Letter From Cairo” piece by Peter Hessler (China 1996-98). Entitled “Big Brother–Where is the Muslim Brotherhood leading Egypt?” the article gives a history lesson on the Muslim Brotherhood and sums up where the Brotherhood (and the nation) are today. Peter, as many of you know, lives in Cairo with his wife and young family. This coming April his next book, Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West, will be published.

Award-winning novelist Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) and memoirist Elisabeth H. Breslav will discuss their experiences coming of age in a warzone during World War II in a free reading at Bluestockings Bookstore in Manhattan on January, 13 at 7 p.m. Both women just published book chapters in a new collection of first-hand stories entitled That Mad Game: Growing Up in a Warzone, an anthology of essays from around the globe. The book is perhaps the first anthology of essays by writers describing what it’s like to be a child enduring the insanity of war. As a Dutch child during World War II, Breslav lived through the Nazi occupation of Holland and survived the “Hunger Winter,” the extension of the occupation to 1945 in parts of Holland that grew from the November 1944 Allied defeat profiled in the epic A Bridge Too Far. While there are numerous first-person accounts of the Holocaust, . . .