Peace Corps writers

To Know the Rainforest (Peace Corps Novel) by Paul Mathes (Colombia 1964–66) iUniverse $18.95 (paperback); $22.00 (hardcover); $3.99 (Kindle) 309 pages 2012 Reviewed by Dennis Grubb (Colombia 1961-63) “This was life. This is why he joined the Peace Corps .The could be danger ahead, but the possibility was what made it interesting …..Maybe I am no longer the kid I used to be. Maybe I am becoming a different person ….But what would the Peace Corps brass think about all this-if I they ever found out. No matter, he told himself. I am here to help Colombians; that’s what I am doing.”Colombian settings in books written by former Peace Corps Volunteers, or RPCVs as we are known are few and far between. Paul Mathes, an RPCV , Colombia 1964-66, self-published  “To Know the Rainforest”,  is an action /adventure novel  incorporating  the three well-worn  Latin America and Colombia themes: poverty, land and . . .

The Barrios of Manta: A Personal Account of the Peace Corps in Ecuador by Rhoda and Earle Brooks (Ecuador 1962–64) Untreed Reads $4.99 (Kindle) 324 pages (estimated print length) July 2012 Reviewed by Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002–04) Originally published by New American Library in 1965, The Barrios of Manta was republished last year as an eBook in honor of the Peace Corps’ 50th anniversary. It remains not only an important document of the Peace Corps’ first work in Ecuador but also an engaging portrait of a fascinating couple, Rhoda and Earle Brooks, the married Volunteers who lived in one of the poorest barrios in the drought-stricken fishing port of Manta from 1962 to 1964. The problems the Brookses faced, the many resourceful ways they solved them, and the occasional failures they met are all relevant to the work of Volunteers today, and should be of interest to anyone who has . . .

 [According to former Peace Corps Evaluator and historian Stanley Meisler (PC/HQ 1963-65), author of When The World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years the Peace Corps did go to Israel, at least briefly. Stan wrote to me: “To punish India for battling Pakistan over Kashmir, LBJ held up a group of PCVs heading there in 1965. They shuttled from Israel to Guam to the Philippines for six weeks until LBJ gave in to Shriver and allowed them to go to India. Before that event, PCVs in Ethiopia went to Israel. Dick Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) reminds me that a number of Ethie Is did their 1963 summer project in Israel working on a kibbutz. This was arranged by Harris Wofford (Ethiopia CD 1962-64). In this “A Writer Writes” essay, Bob Cisco writes about his recent trip, last month, to Israel and what he found after all these years.] The . . .

The second of our two Peace Corps Writers at The New Yorker, George Packer (Togo 1982-83), has a book coming out at the end of May. Packer’s book is a massive study of some 432 pages that goes on sale for $27.00 on May 21, 2013. Farrar, Straus and Giroux is publishing the book that, as they write, is: “A riveting examination of a nation in crisis.” The Unwinding: An inner History of the New America journeys through the lives of several Americans, including Dean Price, the son of tobacco farmers, and an evangelist for new economy in the rural South. The narrative combines these intimate stories with biographical sketches of such figures as Newt Gingrich to Jay-Z. The book, according to FSG ” portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer relevant, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for . . .

Recollections of our Peace Corps Service 1963-65: Kick-Off, Life in Guatemala, and Afterwards Compiled by Ramona Whaley, edited by Dave Smits Peace Corps Writers, $13.75 288 pages 2012 Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-96) Recollections of Our Peace Corps Service 1963-65 is a unique compilation of stories and essays written by an entire group of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, “Guatemala III,” a “mixed bag” that included an African American, Japanese Chomorro, Jews, and Hispanic Americans.  The book is divided into three sections: (1) Roads to the Peace Corps and the Training Experience; (2) Service in Guatemala; (3) Thereafter.  Each writer recalls being inspired by JFK’s unforgettable “ask not” speech, and they all share the “black anguish” of his assassination.  Several participated in the March on Washington in 1963 and heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “mountaintop speech” that filled them with an idealistic, determination to promote justice, equality . . .

Summer Writing Workshop Offers Discount to Peace Corps Writers Anyone connected with the Peace Corps who writes (or would like to write) is invited–at a Peace Corps discount–to attend the West Virginia Writers’ Workshop July 18 to July 21 on the campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. This program is run by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93). Mark’s books include The Incurables: Stories and The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala. He directs the West Virginia Writers’ Workshop. Over four productive and thrilling days, attendees will participate in intimate (no more than 12 people) writing workshops under the guidance of nationally recognized authors of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and screenplays, including RPCVs Sandra Meek (Botswana 1989-91) and Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1990-93); will engage in interactive craft talks; will listen to and participate in readings of creative work; and will learn how to navigate the sometimes intimidating world of . . .

Peter Hessler: Strange Stones   “Strange Stones” (Harper Collins, 2013), by Peter Hessler (R). (Hessler photo: Darryl Kennedy) Two members of the famous “China Gang” of Peace Corps writers, Peter Hessler and Mike Meyer, will be talking about China and Peter’s new book, Strange Stones at the Asia Society on Tuesday, May 21, 2013, at 6:30 p.m to 8:30 p.m. Here are the details: ChinaFile Presents: Peter Hessler, author of the recently published Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West, a collection of essays and writing on China and the United States over the past decade. He will be in discussion with author Michael Meyer and Susan Jakes, Editor of ChinaFile. Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Hessler’s best reportage from The New Yorker over the past decade. During this time, Hessler lived in both Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in . . .

This is Africa: Peace Corps Malawi and the Liberian Civil War by Eugene T. Caruso (Malawi 1990–92) CreateSpace $9.99 120 pages 2013   Reviewed by Jack Allison (Malawi 1966-69) Perhaps an ambitious title for such a short book which documents the author’s adventures as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi which began in late 1990, then on to Liberia in early 1994 with the United Nations. Since I was posted as a PCV just seven miles north of Balaka (1967-68-69), I resonated with many of his experiences, including our both having suffered through two bouts of malaria. The first 102 pages of this 120 page book reveal Caruso’s reflections on Malawian culture, including his introduction to Chichewa, the national language; locally available foods, such as nsima, the national staple made from maize flour; his newly found joy of walking (“Malawi provided me with an appreciation of walking during the time . . .

Thai Comic Books Poems from my life in Thailand With the Peace Corps by Burgess Needle (Thailand 1967-69) Big Table Publishing, $14.00 60 pages 2013 Reviewed by Tony Zurlo(Nigeria 1964-66) In the Tucson Weekly, Author/Critic Jarret Keene wrote that in the poem “Who Collects the Eggs” Burgess Needle is exposing how the “teacher inevitably becomes a student, and how a child’s perspective is often more realistic and more enlightening than any so-called grown-up’s.” I concur absolutely; indeed, Needle’s collection Thai Comic Books is about this maturation, a process that perhaps most volunteers experience. An experience that seems to validate why the Peace Corps in the 1960s and still today is worthy of expansion  (Congress please take notice). Postcard photos of ducks in Boston intrigue his Thai school children. They ask who owns the ducks . He answers that nobody owns them: PUBLIC ducks. What does that MEAN? Why do children . . .

To order books whose titles are in blue from Amazon, click on the title or book cover — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance that will help support our annual writers’ awards. The Mountain School (Peace Corps memoir) by Greg Alder (Lesotho 2003–06) CreateSpace $13.00 (paperback), $5.00 (Kindle) 253 pages • Volunteers in the African Bush: Memoris From Sierra Leone Edited by David Read Barker (Sierra Leone 1965–67) Dog Year Publishing $15.00 (paperback); $3.99 (Kindle) 163 pages 2013 • Volunteers of America: The Journey of a Peace Corps Teacher by Dennis L. Carlson (Libya 1968–69) Sense Publishers $38.00 (paperback); $98.00 (hardcover) April 2012 • This is Africa: Peace Corps Malawi and the Liberian Civil War by Eugene T. Caruso (Malawi 1990–92) CreateSpace $9.99 120 pages 2013 • At Home in the World: Globalization and the Peace Corps in Nepal By Jim F. Fisher (Nepal . . .

Paul Theroux’s new book is a 2,500-mile foray into Africa’s heart (he’s been there before!) It is, says Theroux, his last trip on the continent. “Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,” writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey. Theroux first came to Africa when he was 22 and a PCV. We might say that the land has never left him. Now he returns, after fifty years on the road, to explore the little-traveled territory of western Africa and to take stock both of the place and of himself, as the book jacket tells us. The book jacket copy goes onto say: His odyssey takes him northward from Cape Town, through South Africa and Namibia, then on into Angola, wishing to head farther still until he reaches the end of the line. Journeying alone through the greenest continent, Theroux encounters a world increasingly removed from . . .

Broughton Cobern (Nepal 1973-75) is the author of the bestselling Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, a chronicle of the iconic first American expedition to Mount Everest in the spring of 1963. Now he has published to coincide with the climb’s 50th anniversary, The Vast Unknown America’s First Ascent of Everest. Crown Publishing will bring the book out on April 30, 2013, which means that it is already available on line or in book stores, if you can find one. This book and the climb are interesting in a number of ways. Some history that, of course, relates to the Peace Corps. One of the men on that famous climb was Willi Unsoeld who had just gone to work for the Peace Corps as the deputy director in Nepal. The director was the famous American climber Bob Bates, and Shriver in 1961 had asked Bates who he wanted as his deputy. Bates said Unsoeld. . . .

The April 29, 2013  issue of The New Yorker has a piece about Boston by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) in The Talk of the Town comment section. Packer writes about the city, its history, the Marathon, and the bombing.  He writes about how the spectators rushed to the scene, not away from it. “A man who had lost his own son in the Iraq War rushed a young man whose lower legs had been blown off to the tent, and so kept another father from losing his son.” He comments on the fact that Bostonians responded to the moment while our Senators in Washington, D.C. “cowered before the gun lobby and blocked passage of the most basic provisions–provisions supported by an overwhelming majority of the public–to diminish the gun violence to which more and more Americans, especially young men, are prone.” If you don’t get The New Yorker, my guess is . . .