Archive - August 27, 2015

A Writer Writes My Freedom Summer Peace Corps Novel by Simone Zelitch (Hungary 1991-93) Over twenty years after my time in Peace Corps Hungary, I’ve finally published my Peace Corps novel.  No, it doesn’t take place at the University of Veszprem in 1991; it’s set in Mississippi. Waveland (The Head and the Hand, 2015) centers on a hapless, earnest, white volunteer during Freedom Summer. The book is about good intentions, culture shock, and eventual maturity. It’s about the stupid mistakes all outsiders make when we jump into deep water without knowing how to swim. In the summer of 1964, when the Freedom Movement decided to invite white volunteers to Mississippi, some called it a “domestic Peace Corps”. These young people from the North would staff libraries and daycare centers, teach literacy classes, and join on-going voter-registration drives in a campaign that culminated in a challenge to the all-white Mississippi delegation . . .