Archive - 2014

Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) will be appearing at the Berkshire Festival of Woman Writers in a panel discussion entitled Balancing the Personal and the Political with writers Carol Ascher and Laurie Lisle, taking place on Thursday, March 6, 2014 at the Kirpalu Center for Yoga and Health, Route 183, Lenox, MA, 7PM. Seating is limited, pre-registration required.  Please call 866-200-5203

Frances, you were part of the short-lived Peace Corps experiment to recruit families to be Peace Corps Volunteers. When you joined how big was your family? My husband Paul and I had four children in 1971. Daniel had just turned 11. Our daughter Nancy was 8; Peter turned 6 right after we were in, and Matthew turned 3 that August. . With a large family, why did you join? We happened to be in between jobs deciding what we should do next when we found out about the Peace Corps taking families. The Peace Corps was  something we were always interested in and decide why not.  It sounded like the perfect thing for us at the time and we felt up to the challenge of contributing in this manner. We also felt it would be a wonderful educational experience for our family. . Where were you sent as Volunteer? We . . .

Wanderlust Satisfied by Kay Gillies Dixon (Colombia 1962–64) Peace Corps Writers 159 Pages $12.00 (paperback), $3.99 (Kindle) 2013 Reviewed by Helene Ballmann Dudley (Colombia 1968–70, Albania/Slovakia 1997–99) One aspect of a good memoir is its ability to identify commonality in the human experience.  I thought Kay Gillies Dixon had borrowed my mother and my life for the first section of her book.  Kay, like myself, wanted something more than the rather limited path laid out for her to follow. Her roots were deep in western Pennsylvania, but her eyes were scanning the horizon for adventures unknown and definitely not understood in her small town. While Kay paints a vivid picture of growing up in Pennsylvania, including more than I ever wanted to know about Thanksgiving turkeys, she left me wanting more about her Peace Corps experience.  Perhaps it was because, as she writes “Our efforts in urban community development work . . .

I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer (Kenya 1969–71) Hawthorne Books & Literary Arts $18.95 466 Pages April 1, 2014 Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) I began reading Tom Spanbauer’s new novel, I Loved You More, with high expectations. When I Googled him I had found that he was an acclaimed author with four previous novels. When I read the French flap of the beautifully produced book, I was even more intrigued.  It was a story of a triangle, two men and one woman, two of whom are straight and one a gay man who at times loved women. It was also partially set New York City in the 1980’s during the first confused whisperings of the AIDS plague, a time I remember all too well, when fear and later terror permeated all our lives. We didn’t know what was happening, why friends, lovers, neighbors, and family were getting . . .

[Paradise in Front of Me is a collection of inspirational, heartbreaking, and comical short stories about a Peace Corps couple’s experiences in a small  site in Central America called El Paraíso. The village is nestled in the mountains of southeast Honduras. Although its name means “paradise,” the town is a place of extreme poverty. In 2004, Kevin and Cristina Finch, were assigned to El Paraíso, and as PCVs focused on AIDS education and community development. Life in El Paraíso was at first a tough go, and Kevin and Cristina were about to ET when strange changes begin to transpire. Through a variety of characters, humorous events, and life-changing experiences, Kevin’s memoir describes how their lives were transformed. As Kevin writes, “Perhaps paradise does exist where one least expects.” Here is my interview with Kevin about his new book published by Peace Corps Writers.] Kevin, where are you from in the . . .

Bridges: An Extraordinary Journey of the Heart (Peace Corps Novel) W. S. [Wendy Sue] Williamson (Cameroon 1994–96, Ecuador 1996–98) Agapy Press $12.95 (paperback), $7.50 (Kindle) 215 pages April 2014 Reviewed by Angene Wilson (Liberia 1962–64) THIS NOVEL can be placed in the categories of spiritual fiction, adventure thriller, and mystery and suspense and suggests a relationship to The Alchemist, The Celestine Prophecy, and The Shack. The front cover shows a bridge that might be anywhere, connecting to somewhere, probably representing the journey of the protagonist’s heart, the heart of the young Peace Corps Volunteer, Jessie. So Bridges is not a Peace Corps memoir, although it was first written after author Wendy Sue Williamson served as a volunteer in Ecuador and Cameroon. It may be partly autobiographical. After a career as a study abroad director and author of a student travel guide, Study Abroad 101, Williamson found the Bridges manuscript again . . .

[A letter in the New York Times, (2/18/14) from Bob Vila (Panama 1969-70) on Ernest Hemingway’s papers and Bob’s involvement with the Finca Vigía Foundation.] To the Editor: Re “A Mutable Feast” (Arts pages, Feb. 11), about digital copies of Ernest Hemingway’s papers available at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston: The fascinating journey of the Hemingway document images was the work of many: the diplomatic efforts of Representative James P. McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, who launched the project; the wise decisions made by both the Cuban and United States governments; the tireless work of the Finca Vigía Foundation, which is responsible for document conservation and digitization; and the technical support of the EMC, Intel and Emulex Corporations. For the last 10 years, despite the contentious embargo, this collaboration between the foundation and Cuba, built upon trust and mutual respect, has benefited both the United States . . .

Julia & Rodrigo By Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991–93) Gival Press $20.00 (paperback) 215 pages 2013 Reviewed by Ann Neelon (Senegal 1978–79) I was thirteen in 1968, when Franco Zeffirelli’s lush version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet hit the big screen. It was also the year of the Tet offensive, the year Peter Arnett reported that a United States military officer had insisted, on the record, that his unit had had to destroy a village in order to save it. The banality of evil embraced by the U.S. government in drafting its young men and sending them to Vietnam resonated with that of the Montaques and Capulets in sacrificing their children to a murderous feud. As Romeo and Juliet, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey — who were not trained Shakespearean actors but teenagers themselves-proved the ultimate flower children, making love not war. To watch the film was not just to fall . . .