Peace Corps writers

A Writer Writes Border Bleed by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978–80) In 1989, days after my first big publishing break, I was hanged in effigy in Bolivia. Protestors marched on the American embassy. Although I had left the country, the nation’s journalists boycotted our ambassador’s Fourth of July reception to express their anger. La Paz was the setting for a story that The Atlantic Monthly published called “Stone Cowboy on the High Plains.” Being caricatured as a monster in the Latin American media was not the reaction I had been hoping for. I had been set up. An organization called the Council on Hemispheric Affairs published a communiqué linking me with ugly sentiments about Bolivians that the story’s protagonist expressed. The premise was absurd, the motivation political. The magazine’s credits identified me as an American diplomat, and the Council was a fierce critic of U.S. policy to Latin America. But knowing . . .

[Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) has won the Carthage College Alumni Award, called the Beacon, which will be presented on May 3, 2013 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Established in 1847, Carthage is a four-year private college of the liberal arts and sciences, affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church. The college is located on an 80-acre arboretum on the shore of Lake Michigan, half way between Chicago and Milwaukee. The Award is given to those alumni “who provide light to their communities, honoring the recipient for one specific accomplishment, act of service, professional or personal achievement, event, or program.” Tony was honored, not for his Peace Corps, but for his writings. The release on the college web side reads:] Anthony D’Souza ’95 Sarasota, Florida Anthony’s third novel, “Mule,” was released in September 2011 to advance praise from “Vanity Fair,” “Gawker,” “Kirkus,” “Booklist,” and “Library Journal.”Anthony was was an English major, . . .

  Editors Janet Dixon Keller and Katharine Wiegele (Philippines 1988-90) have over 40 years of experience as hands-on developmental editors. Janet’s background includes extended terms as Editor-in-Chief at two international journals (The American Anthropologist and Ethos), three decades in bringing student work to fruition, a term as editor of a University of Illinois Press book series, collaborative grant writing, and team-based production of administrative documents. RPCV Katharine Wiegele is an author and anthropologist with years of editorial experience with various publications including Politics and the Life Sciences, Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society, Daily Illini, and others. Her book, Investing in Miracles: El Shaddai and the Transformation of Popular Catholicism in the Philippines, published in the United States and the Philippines, won a National Book Award in the Philippines (Manilla Critics Circle and National Book Development Board). Katharine is also currently teaching at Northern Illinois University. Janet and Katharine have extensive experience with both commercial . . .

INTO THE STORM: Journeys with Alzheimer’s Collin Tong (Thailand 1968-69), Editor Book Publishers Network, $16.95 170 pages 2014 Reviewed by Dan Close (Ethiopia 1966–68) In 1953, the brilliant scientist and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote a short story entitled “The Nine Billion Names of God.” In a few short pages, he described how the monks of a lamasery high in the mountains of Tibet hired a couple of technicians to install a program on their computer. The monks are dedicated to reciting all the names of God, and it is their belief that when all nine billion names have been chanted, the world will end. To accelerate this process, they need a computer program. The technicians install a program, but don’t believe it will work. Fearing the wrath of the monks, they leave in the middle of the night, making their way down the dark mountain trails as . . .

Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) is a finalist for the 2014 City & Regional Magazine Award for the Essay/Commentary. The piece is “Heritage on the Half Shell”, about growing up eating oysters with his dad. It ran in Sarasota Magazine. The other finalists are from Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle and the Washingtonian. Link to press release of the finalists. Link to the story. Here is Tony’s article. • Heritage on the Half Shell By Tony D’Souza I FIRST CAME TO FLORIDA the way I imagine many Midwesterners did: as a kid, uncomfortably strapped into the back seat of my parents’ car. We traveled to Longboat Key during the mid-’80s, and I remember those trips as a 10-, 11-, and 12-year-old being filled with mental and physical tests along the lines of what the first monkeys shot into space must have suffered. I’d stare forlornly out my window at the . . .

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com, click on the book cover or the bold book title — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance that will help support our annual writers awards. • Paradise in Front of Me: Realizing Life’s Beauty in An Unexpected Place by Kevin G. Finch (Honduras 2004–06) Peace Corps Writers $12.95 (paperback) 260 pages January 2014 • Letters Home: A Young Peace Corps Volunteer’s Account of Personal, Cultural, and Bureaucratic Struggles in the ’60s by Carol Sue Bock Gonzalez (Colombia 1960s) CreateSpace $11.95 (paperback) 338 pages April 2013 • Only Bees Die: Peace Corps Eastern Europe (Peace Corps novel) by Robert Keller (Albania 2008–09) Self-Published $10.95 (paperback), $3.99 (Kindle) 206 pages 2010 • Iran: Stories from the Peace Corps by John Krauskopf (Iran 1965–67) Lulu Publisher $20.00 (paperback) 296 pages 2013 • Mr. McSnipper and Other Verses (poetry for . . .

The Fish & Rice Chronicles: My Extraordinary Adventures in Palau and Micronesia by PG Bryan (Micronesia 1967–70) Xlibris $19.99 (paperback); 7.69 (Kindle) 334 pages 2011 Reviewed by Reilly Ridgell  (Micronesia 1971–73) In 1993 the University of Guam (UOG) forwarded to me a manuscript of a memoir written by an RPCV, Patrick Bryan, who had spent three years in Palau. The University had recently created the University of Guam Press in an effort to bring all the University’s publishing efforts under one umbrella. At the time I was working at Gum Community College, and I was a member of the UOG Press’ advisory board. I looked over Bryan’s manuscript and drew up a short list of critiques and suggestions for rewrites. I was impressed with Bryan’s vivid descriptions, but there were a few quirks and problems that, if fixed, I thought, would make the book much stronger. I returned the manuscript to UOG . . .

Timeless: Photography of Rowland Scherman Edited by Michael E. Jones and Christine Jones Foreword by Judy Collins “Where’s that kid with the camera?” – 1961 Peace Corps administrator Tom Matthews I wore my Leica under my jacket for some reason. I moved my lapel back to show them and said, “Here I am.” –Excerpt from Rowland Scherman’s Timeless essay on his first assignment with the Peace Corps. Photographs include: Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Arthur Ashe, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Stephen Stills, John Lennon and the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Barbara Walters, and many more. From the Foreword by Judy Collins “Rowland became a freelance photographer for LIFE magazine in the mid-sixties and the next time we met, I had a big hit with Joni Mitchell’s song, “Both Sides Now,” in 1967 on my album Wildflowers. Irene Nieves, a top editor at LIFE, decided she wanted to do a cover story on my career. . . .

Balancing the Personal and the Political Thursday, March 6, 2014, 7 p.m. Kripalu Center Lenox, Mass Panel Discussion with Carol Ascher, Laurie Lisle and Marnie Mueller Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, Route 183, Lenox, 7 p.m.  Seating is limited, pre-registration required.  Please call 866-200-5203 Three feminist writers, each with different rich experiences and long-developed perspectives, will explore the potential challenges and conflicts of simultaneously “writing the self” and “righting the world.” Although the writers on this panel have spent years deeply concerned about environmental dangers to our planet as well as other burning political issues, we are predominantly writers of memoir and fiction. In our everyday lives we have taken strong activist positions, though when we sit down to write, our outrage at the world’s injustices more often than not serves as subtext in our work. The desire to right the world can be hidden in personal obsessions, or . . .

From Books & Books press release Barbara Joe will read from Confessions of Secret Latina: How I Fell Out of Love with Castro & In Love with the Cuban People March 2, Sunday 4 p.m. 265 Aragon Ave, Coral Gables, Florida Whatever your ethnic background or personal opinion of Fidel Castro, you will find something new and revealing in this book. It offers a frank firsthand account of one woman’s journey, not only through Cuba, but through a life filled with unique challenges and tragedies. When Castro first rose to power, Barbara Joe, like so many Americans, was entranced by the romantic vision of a scrubby revolutionary defeating the hated dictator Fulgencio Batista. But her years of direct experience with Cubans and within Cuba itself gradually eroded that vision. Then, unexpectedly, she found herself being attacked by a once close friend of Latino heritage, who not only vehemently disagreed with . . .

Paradise in Front of Me – Realizing Life’s Beauty in an Unexpected Place by Kevin G. Finch (Honduras 2004–06) Peace Corps Writers $$12.95 (paperback), $4.95 (Kindle) 240 pages 2014 Reviewed by Ben East (Malawi 1996–98) The recurring image in Kevin G. Finch’s Paradise in Front of Me is that of an impoverished Honduran child looking up at a locked schoolhouse door. Shut out again. The author and the residents of El Paraíso repeatedly find their plans scuttled: by naked madmen in San Juan, cancelled classes in Monte Cristo, failed transportation to Cuyalí, striking teachers, impassable rivers, traveling gringo evangelicals . . . there’s no end to the obstacles in this Honduran state near the border with Nicaragua. “The teachers are on strike,” Finch writes towards the end, “and another day is wasted in the future of Honduras.  The child blinks his eyes to bat away the drops of rain running down from . . .

85 Days in Cuba: A True Story about Friendship and Struggle Brandon Valentine (Jamaica 2000–04, Panamá 2006–09) iUniverse $17.96 (paperback); $3.99 (Kindle) 264 pages 2006 Reviewed by Bob Arias (Colombia 1964-66) I was asked to read this book by the author in 2009 . . . and I did not. Bummer, the message was clear then as it is now! Friendship and loyalty to those around you are essential to who we are . . . as Brandon tells us in his “trip” to the island nation of Cuba . . . or was this trip just to be with his best friend, Carlos and his family in Cuba? Quien sabe! Brandon had spent three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica from 2000 to 2004 in a very poor section of Kingston teaching . . . and his neighbor was Carlos from Cuba. (An interesting note, Walt and Linda are Brandon’s parents, and they were Volunteers . . .

Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) will be appearing at the Berkshire Festival of Woman Writers in a panel discussion entitled Balancing the Personal and the Political with writers Carol Ascher and Laurie Lisle, taking place on Thursday, March 6, 2014 at the Kirpalu Center for Yoga and Health, Route 183, Lenox, MA, 7PM. Seating is limited, pre-registration required.  Please call 866-200-5203

Frances, you were part of the short-lived Peace Corps experiment to recruit families to be Peace Corps Volunteers. When you joined how big was your family? My husband Paul and I had four children in 1971. Daniel had just turned 11. Our daughter Nancy was 8; Peter turned 6 right after we were in, and Matthew turned 3 that August. . With a large family, why did you join? We happened to be in between jobs deciding what we should do next when we found out about the Peace Corps taking families. The Peace Corps was  something we were always interested in and decide why not.  It sounded like the perfect thing for us at the time and we felt up to the challenge of contributing in this manner. We also felt it would be a wonderful educational experience for our family. . Where were you sent as Volunteer? We . . .