Archive - April 2018

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Latest Update: Unoffical Guide to Resource for Peace Corps History
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Review — TRAVELS IN SOUTH AMERICA by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras)
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The History of Peace Corps Writers
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Review — RAW DAWGIN’ by David Mather (Chile)
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New books by Peace Corps writers — April 2018
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Review — MAGIC HOURS by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan)
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Peace Corps Volunteers Archival Collection at the Kennedy Library
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Audiobook—The Way To Tell Your Peace Corps Story
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Update on the Returned Peace Corps Oral History Project
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The Friends of Colombia and Albuquerque RPCVS support Marina Orth Foundation (Colombia)
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WAGING PEACE: The Peace Corps Experience (Sierra Leone)
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James Comey’s Wife an RPCV (Sierra Leone)
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The “Cat Person” is an RPCV (Kenya)
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Review — AMERICRUISE by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras)
15
Why Paul Theroux Loves Cape Cod (Malawi)

Latest Update: Unoffical Guide to Resource for Peace Corps History

An unofficial guide to the locations of resources describing the Peace Corps, and its history.  This list is a cooperative effort with Alana deJoseph, producer of the documentary in progress, A Towering Task, her team and the many archivists and librarians at the places cited. Thank you to all . — J Roll This list of locations is independent of the Peace Corps and was created without the assistance or authorization of the Peace Corps.  The archives and/or organizations each maintain their collections and have their own rules and procedures for accepting donations and accessing the collection. It is necessary to contact each directly for further information. (Update: April 30, 2018   This is the latest information we have. Please comment, correct and contribute.) Peace Corps is a federal agency staffed by civilian service employees, who may or may not have served in the Peace Corps and who are responsible for . . .

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Review — TRAVELS IN SOUTH AMERICA by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras)

Travels in South America by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) CreateSpace 418 pages December 2017 – second edition $22.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964-66) • “Che! Loco!” This is not the first book I have reviewed written by “traveler” Lawrence Lihosit. Lihosit and his Mejicana wife Margarita, and her sister Licha, took me to Mexico City and the wedding of friends… Jesus Was Arrested in Mexico City and Missed the Wedding.  Who can turn away from Jesus being arrested and not making it to the wedding? I was hooked. Travels in South America is not a quick tour of South America…not Lorenzo’s style. He, Margarita and Licha feel they are home among new friends in exciting environments. Go with them as they explore Quito, meet the Incas, and share a bus ride with a goat and some chickens. This is the way to travel. Pack a copy of the book, add . . .

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The History of Peace Corps Writers

In April, 1989, Marian Haley Beil and I published a 4-page newsletter entitled RPCV Writers. I had — as a writer — been tracking other Peace Corps writers, and had already organized a panel discussion about Peace Corps books for the 25th Anniversary RPCV Conference in 1986. Marian, also an Ethiopia I (1962-64) Volunteer, agreed to help me. She designed, published and circulated the quarterly newsletter. We saw our newsletter as a way of sharing information about publications, readings, writing grants, and teaching positions for RPCVs. To recognize and promote Peace Corps writers, in 1990, we established annual awards for outstanding writing in a variety of genre. We funded the award prizes and have (so far) given out 143. In July of 1991 we changed the publication’s name to RPCV Writers & Readers and increased the number of issues to six a year. In November 1998, we published our last . . .

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Review — RAW DAWGIN’ by David Mather (Chile)

  Another* page-turner by David Mather! • Raw Dawgin’ by David J. Mather (Chile 1968–70) Peace Corps Writers March 2018 380 pages $14.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Carl M. Gallegos Raw Dawgin by David Mather is a fascinating tale about the interactions — sometimes volatile and other times heartwarming — between commercial fishermen and recreational boaters and sports fishermen seeking to enjoy the pleasures of modern day Florida. Add drug cartel mafiosos and retired law enforcement undercover agents to the mix, and you have an exciting and thoroughly entertaining story. Mather has skillfully woven in many players — long time blue collar residents and fun-seeking recent arrivals — who one can find in present-day Florida. The reader can almost smell the salt air and sense the many “critters” found in the “piney woods” and cypress swamps of Florida’s Gulf Coast. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun read! . . .

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New books by Peace Corps writers — April 2018

  To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — Click on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards.   We are now including a one-sentence description — provided by the author — for the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers  1) to order the book and 2) to volunteer to review it. See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at peacecorpsworldwide@gmail.com, and we’ll send you a copy along with a few instructions. • Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996) Vintage — Reissue edition 352 pages March 2018 $16.95 (paperback), $11.99 (Kindle)   • Borderland: An Exploration of States of Consciousness in New and Selected Sonnets Julie . . .

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Review — MAGIC HOURS by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan)

  Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996) Vintage — Reissue edition 352 pages March 2018 $16.95 (paperback), $11.99 (Kindle)   Reviewed by Dan Campbell (El Salvador, 1974-77) • TOM BISSELL IS AN AWARD WINNING writer from Escanaba, Michigan. He studied English at Michigan State University and in 1996, Bissell joined the Peace Corps and served for seven months with the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan. In an interview in BookBrowse, Tom describes how illness and personal crisis forced him home early and states that his experience in Uzbekistan “was extremely haunting for me personally and I felt I had really failed the people I joined the Peace Corps to help.” Magic Hours is a thoughtful collection of eighteen essays. In the introduction, he states that “to create anything, whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom, is to believe, . . .

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Peace Corps Volunteers Archival Collection at the Kennedy Library

In 1986 the Peace Corps celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. As part of the preparation for that event, an effort was made to establish a repository for the personal papers of returned volunteers relating to their experience in the field. This project was carried forward after the anniversary by a small committee of RPCVs, including Suzy McKee Charnas (Nigeria 1961-62), Roger Landrum (Nigeria 1961-62), Margaret Pollock (Korea 1966-68), and myself under the auspices of the then NPCA known as the Natonal Council of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. While the official records of the Peace Corps are preserved in the National Archives in Washington, D.C., no institution at the time had been systematically saving personal papers and documents of the former Volunteers and staff. With the passage of time it had become increasingly urgent to gather and preserve the irreplaceable records and observations of PCVs service all over the world. That is . . .

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Audiobook—The Way To Tell Your Peace Corps Story

A recent article in Poets & Writers points out that since 2012 sales of audiobooks have posted double-digit gains every years, including a whopping 34 percent boost in 2016. That year publishers sold nearly ninety million audiobooks, more than double the number they sold five years earlier. Thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and the ease of downloading titles online, revenue from the audiobooks at Simon & Schuster, for example, jumped nearly 40 percent last year. According to Audio Publishers Association, an industry trade group, publishers have sold nearly ninety million audiobooks, more than double the number they sold five years earlier. However, audiobooks sales account for less than 4 percent of the  roughly 2.7 billion books sold in all formats each year, but with overall books sales essentially flat and the once booming e-book sector declining, writers have new reason to pay close attention to the increasingly valuable audio . . .

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Update on the Returned Peace Corps Oral History Project

One of the many hidden treasures of Peace Corps history is the RPCV Oral History Collection at the JFK Library, begun more than seventeen years ago by RPCV Robert Klein,(Ghana I). Bob interviewed members of Ghana I for his book, Being First: An Informal History of the Early Peace Corps Robert Klein (Ghana 1961-63) Wheatmark, 2010* and realized how valuable those taped interviews were. He decided to expand to interview as many RPCVs as possible, at his own expense. For years, he crisscrossed the country, interviewing RPCVs and teaching them how to interview others. The JFK Library agreed to archive the tapes. Bob Klein died in 2012 and his work was carried on by his good friend, Phyllis Noble.  Sadly, Phyllis, too has passed on.  But, the JFK Oral History project lives on.  RPCVs have continued this incredibly important work.  Now they have affiliated with the National Peace Corps Association. Here . . .

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The Friends of Colombia and Albuquerque RPCVS support Marina Orth Foundation (Colombia)

  A note from Maureen Orth (Colombia 1964-66) Fellow RPCVs: We’re in the home stretch and hope you will share the pride. I am a former Colombia Peace Corps Volunteer living in Washington DC with a foundation in Medellin that provides laptops and teacher training and emphasizes technology, English and leadership in 21 schools with 8000 kids: MarinaOrthFoundation.org <http://marinaorthfoundation.org/>.  Two of our robotics teams, The Little Engineers, all girls 12-13, and Digiminds, 3 boys and 1 girl, ages 10-11, are about to have one of the most thrilling experiences of their short lives. They have won the robotics championship of Colombia sponsored by RoboRAVE and will be traveling to Albuquerque May 7 – 13 to represent Colombia and compete in the worldwide RoboRAVE competition. These kids beat some of the best public and private schools to have this chance and it is quite an accomplishment for them. They have never been in . . .

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WAGING PEACE: The Peace Corps Experience (Sierra Leone)

   WAGING PEACE: The Peace Corps Experience A film by Allen Mondell (Sierra Leone 1963-65) • I was a Peace Corps teacher in Sierra Leone from 1963-65. For the past 50 years I’ve been a documentary filmmaker. WAGING PEACE: The Peace Corps Experience tells our stories through letters, journals, emails and blogs combined with the profiles of four former Volunteers whose work today shows the enduring impact of these experiences on their own lives and the lives of others. At times hilariously funny, and at other times grimly sad, WAGING PEACE is full of perceptive insights into sacrifice and hardship, courage and defeat—and, ultimately, hope. At a time when society desperately relies on volunteerism, WAGING PEACE is an inspiring call to other Americans, young and old, to cross cultural lines in order to discover a new awareness of the world and, in the end, to wage peace. You can watch . . .

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James Comey’s Wife an RPCV (Sierra Leone)

Thanks to a “Heads Up” from Don Beil (Somalia 1963-65) James Comey, the former FBI Director and author of A Higher Loyalty is married to an RPCV: Patrice Failor (Sierra Leone 1983-85). Comey writes about visiting his then girlfriend in the summer after his first year of law school. The two had met in college. Corney writes in this new book: “All of us have encounters with death in our lives. It’s inevitable. I’ve had my share, even after the Ramsey Rapist receded into my nightmares. There was, for example, the time I visited Patrice, who at this time was just my girlfriend, while she was in the Peace Corps in a remote village in Sierra Leone, West Africa, and I nearly died from contracting malaria. If she had not driven me in the middle of the night on the back of her motorcycle and literally dragged me into a . . .

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The “Cat Person” is an RPCV (Kenya)

  Thanks to a “heads up” from NPCA’s Worldview Magazine and Peter Deekle (Iran 1968-70) I’ve learned that writer Kristen Roupenian (Kenya 2003-05) is a Peace Corps writer. Kristen’s story “Cat Person” in The New Yorker [December 11, 2017] about online dating was the weekly magazine’s second-most-read story of 2017. Also Scout Press has paid a reported seven figures for the rights to two works by Roupenian. The first is a collection of stories, You Know You Want This that is scheduled for release in the spring of 2019. In Worldview article on the achievements of RPCVs, Peter Deekle writes that as a PCV Kristen taught public health and HIV education at an orphan’s center a few hours from the Ugandan border, then worked as a teacher’s aide and a cashier in a bookstore before earning a Master’s degree in English at Harvard. Next she devoted five years to full-time writing. Today . . .

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Review — AMERICRUISE by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras)

  Americruise (Travel) Second edition Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) Self published September 2017 108 pages $13.95 (paperback) Reviewed by David H. Greegor (Mexico 2007-11) • Americruise by Lawrence F. Lihosit is a short book with a mega font perfect for geezers like me, although this 2017 second edition (first edition published in 1993) wasn’t written just for the geriatrics amongst us; the author wrote the original when he was 33. For roughly the first quarter of the book, I can’t say as I liked it at all. I thought the author was wacko with a complete disregard for syntax and the rules of the English language. His style defies description. This completely threw me off at the outset, quite likely because I’d never read anything by Mr. Lihosit before. His crazy syntax reminds of someone writing English but throwing in some Spanish rules of grammar. This makes sense because the heroine in . . .

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Why Paul Theroux Loves Cape Cod (Malawi)

  Thanks for the ‘Heads Up’ from Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971–73) Q & A in The New York Times, April 16, 2018 — JCoyne • Why Paul Theroux Loves Cape Cod By Dave Seminara, New York Times As a child, the author was taken with the sunshine and beaches. He now spends every summer there because “nothing ever changes.”   For 50 years, Paul Theroux’s addictive novels and brutally honest travel narratives have inspired readers to leave home, travel slow and with a purpose beyond sightseeing. His versatility and boundless curiosity shine in Figures in a Landscape, a new collection of essays (to be published on May 8), and in his latest autobiographical novel, Mother Land (which will be published in paperback on May 1), where Mr. Theroux takes readers to his beloved Cape Cod and deep inside the Machiavellian world of a large, dysfunctional family run by a scheming matriarch. It’s a deeply revealing . . .

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