Archive - May 30, 2015

Nigeria Revisited: My Life and Loves Abroad Catherine Onyemelukwe (Nigeria 1962–64) Peace Corps Writers October 2014 314 pages $14.62 (paperback), $9.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Marianne Arieux (Ethiopia 1965–67) • It is 1969. Former Peace Corps Volunteer and American Midwesterner, now Nigerian wife and mother, Catharine Onyemeluke nests with her family in her in-laws remote Igbo village, fleeing the encroaching Biafran war. For the first time since coming to Africa, she must become part of a rural African village without electricity, running water, or a health facility nearby; an undertaking that is a hallmark of Peace Corps training. Onyemelukwe’s telling of this particular venture highlights her achievement in this well written memoir — a tale of a young woman whose adventurous spirit carries her into a life path introduced and limned by the Peace Corps and its lore. Her book has the tone of a life-cycle epic. We are invited on . . .