February 10, 2023 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Stephen Franklin (Turkey) writers about his host country

Feb 10 2023

Chicago Tribune February 10, 2023 • Tragedy has long haunted the broad swath of land where earthquakes have just claimed thousands of lives, left many thousands of people injured and plunged already impoverished millions into yet deeper financial despair. For centuries, an angry earth has shaken communities in the sunbaked mountains and valleys that sprawl across southeastern Turkey. But the earth’s latest deadly roar comes at an especially vulnerable moment for Turkey and Syria, where an unusually bitter cold hourly seals the rubble and the earthquakes’ countless bodies. This tragedy is not a distant one for me. As a journalist, I have traveled along Turkey’s southeastern border and visited Syrian refugees and the places where they were living. But the deeper significance is that my wife and I, as Peace Corps volunteers, ran a small, meagerly supported orphanage for Turkish boys in a slum on the far edge of Istanbul more . . .

HOUSE OF FIRE by Elizabeth Di Grazia (Tonga)

Feb 10 2023

House of Fire shows that thirty years of breaking free from a cycle of violence was not enough to prepare Elizabeth Di Grazia for the trials of starting her own family. Growing up in the 1970s, she suffered repeated sexual abuse, incest, and neglect. Although in the Catholic church, she was forced to have a hushed-up abortion at the age of fourteen. Within a year she was pregnant again, by another brother. Di Grazia gave birth to a son who was quickly taken away and adopted into a family she never knew. Elizabeth’s story traces her healing and the creation of an intentional family. She and her partner, Jody, adopted two Guatemalan babies. They learned that provision and protection were not enough, but refused to allow denial and secrets to go unexposed became critical. Elizabeth di Grazia graduated from Hamline University with an MFA in Writing in 2003. She . . .

Archive - February 10, 2023