Book Reviews

The South American Expeditions, 1540-1545 by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca Translated with notes by Baker H. Morrow (Somalia 1968-69) University of New Mexico Press $39.95 240 pages 2011 Reviewed by Ann Neelon (Senegal 1978-79) As Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, “The evil that men do lives after them./The good is oft interred in their bones.” Thus my guess is that if you can name a Spanish conquistador at all, it’s most likely Hernan Cortés, who succeeded in subjugating all of Mexico between 1519 and 1526.  Cortés famously sank his own ships in Veracruz, on the east coast of Mexico, after hanging two of his men for getting cold feet about schlepping with him across three mountain ranges to scope out Aztec gold in Tenochtitlán.  As Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s The South American Expeditions, 1540-1545 gives evidence, though, not every conqueror is a study in ruthlessness.  Translated with notes . . .

Far Away in the Sky A Memoir of the Biafran Airlift by David L. Koren (1964-66) Createspace, $17.99 Kindle: $8.60 332 pages 2012 Reviewed by Dick Hughes (Nigeria 1962-64) In 1962, when I was in Peace Corps training at UCLA for a teaching job in Nigeria, the official U.S. message was that we were headed for Africa’s “showcase of democracy,” as my Nigeria IV friend Joanne McNeese Mills put it with appropriate irony. How much better the promise of that newly formed nation than that of Ghana, then under the sway of U.S.- educated Kwame Nkrumah, who was flirting with our cold war Soviet and Chinese rivals; and who, god help us, had this crazy idea of forming a unity of African states. Wonder where that idea came from? We all know how that turned out.  Nkrumah was overthrown in a military coup in 1966 that, some have said, was . . .

Peace Corps Experience: Write and Publish Your Memoir Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) !Universe $23.95;Trade $13.95;Kindle $3.03 127 pages 2012 Review by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993–96) As Jane Albritton (India 1967-69) writes in her Foreword to Lawrence Lihosit’s Peace Corps Experience: Write and Publish Your Memoir, “This book is no idle gift, but a gift-wrapped challenge.” Albritton should know, as Series Editor of the daunting, but brilliantly successful Peace Corps at 50 project. The point of Lihosit’s book is that it is vitally important to write about your Peace Corps experience, not only for your own gratification, but for posterity, because the countries we served in are changing rapidly, and a Volunteer’s experience gives great insight into far-flung places at different points in history. The history of Peace Corps is not a set of dry dates and names of Washington men in suits, but a grand parade of testimonials by . . .

From the San Joaquin: Stories by Barry Kitterman (Belize 1976–78) Southern Methodist University Press $23.95 208 pages 2011 Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963–65) IN ANTICIPATION OF WRITING THIS REVIEW I read Barry Kitterman’s award winning debut novel, The Baker’s Boy (The Maria Thomas Award for Fiction), which I admired greatly, but which didn’t prepare me for the muscular, thoroughly authentic voice of From the San Joaquin. From the San Joaquin has been compared to Winesburg, Ohio; it’s more a novel in form than a collection of short stories as well as a decidedly American story of small town life, but unlike Winesburg it never flirts with the grotesque, nor panders to notions of quaintness. Covering a forty year span, Kitterman subtly weaves the lives of half a dozen main characters and a dozen subsidiary ones into a complex, multileveled narrative. It’s set in Ivanhoe, California in Tulare County, the . . .

Whispering Campaign: Stories from Mesoamerica by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) iUniverse, Inc. $11.95 120 pages November, 2009 Reviewed by Allen W. Fletcher (Senegal 1969-71) • Lawrence Lihosit is an inveterate self-publisher, has served us up a pungent and tasty array of stories in his Whispering Campaign – Stories from Mesoamerica. They have the allure of Mexican street food — rough and honest and earthy. They are laced with the complementary spices of cross-cultural compassion and gringo guilt; and they go directly to the gut. Lihosit spent a total of seven and a half years in Mexico and Central America, and from the feel of it, it was not a touristic enterprise. By his own account he grew close enough to the people of the several countries in which he lived to tip toe on the dangerous side of local politics. There is no question where his feelings fall with . . .

Ecuador RPCV Marnie Mueller is the author of Green Fires, which won the 1995 Maria Thomas Fiction Award and an American Book Award.  Her other novels are The Climate of the Country and My Mother’s Island. The latter has been optioned for a feature film, the screenplay of which, she has signed on to write.   She has recently completed a new novel, Don’t Think Twice.  Here she reviews:   Rock Worn By Water by Florence Chard Dacey (Nigeria 1963–65) Austin: Plain View Press March 2009 77 pages $14.20 Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963–65) Florence Chard Dacey had endeared herself to me before I even opened her book for review. Take note, fellow writers! Her accompanying letter was exemplary in its restraint, simply stating the facts of publication (date, price, and ISBN) and that she as a former volunteer would like her collection to be listed and considered for review . . .