Peace Corps writers

Guatemala One:  A Journal of the First Peace Corps Project by George Gurney (1962–63) Self-Published $10.95 (paperback) 255 pages 2011 Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993–95) “In November of 1962, training began for the first Peace Corps project to work in the Central American country of Guatemala. In the spring of 1963, the first group of volunteers arrived in time for a military coup.” George “Lee” Gurney joined a group of Volunteers who trained in New York City, Puerto Rico, and at New Mexico State College before embarking upon a journey that widened his horizons forever. In his early twenties, he also found his wife in the Peace Corps. They both worked to help the people of rural Guatemala, but both suffered recurring health problems that truncated their tours. Many years after his Peace Corps experience, Gurney decided to write his memoir, which is actually a diary more than . . .

Bending with the Wind: Memoir of a Cambodian Couple’s Escape to America by Bounchoeurn Sao and Diyana D. Sao (as told to Karline F. Bird (Thailand 1968-70) McFarland & Company, Inc. $35.00 210 pages 2012 Reviewed by Collin Tong (Thailand 1968-69) With the fall of Phnom Penh on April 20, 1975 and the ascendancy of the Khmer Rouge came the closing of Cambodia’s border and a cataclysmic reorganization of Cambodian society. As documented in previous histories and first-person accounts, the Cambodian nightmare led to the wave of terror marked by torture and the extermination of intelligentsia. More than two million people, a quarter of the population, perished in the Killing Fields. In 1970, the United States and South Vietnamese forces invaded eastern Cambodia, driving the North Vietnamese army further west. A young Cambodian double agent working for American and Cambodian Special Forces, Bounchoeurn Sao, was stationed near the Cambodian and Lao border. . . .

[Josh Swiller (Zambia 1994-96)  is the author of The Unheard, A Memoir of Deafness and Africa, a New York Times bestseller, and is a dedicated advocate for the deaf and disabled and for cultivating a peaceful and playful mind. He’s had a wide variety of careers including raw food chef, Peace Corps volunteer, forest ranger, and sheepskin slipper craftsman. Currently, he is a hospice worker and Zen monk in Ithaca, New York. Josh lectures throughout the country, sharing a message of acceptance, gratitude and love. www.joshswiller.com]     Switched at Birth’ on ABC Family casts a mix of deaf, hearing and hard-of-hearing actors, will also soon present an episode that is entirely in American Sign Language. This article from the LA TIMES came out today. It cites the work that Josh did in the production of the new show. The article was written by Deborah Vankin, Los Angeles Times February 27, 2013, 6:00 a.m. On . . .

A Writer Writes Mark G. Wentling (Honduras 1967-69 & Togo 1970-73) was a Peace Corps Volunteer and in Gabon and Niger  Peace Corps staff. He then  joined USAID in 1977 and served in Niamey, Conakry, Lome, Mogadishu, Dar es Salaam before retiring from the U.S. Senior Foreign Service in 1996.  Since retiring, he has worked for USAID as its Senior Advisor for the Great Lakes, and as its Country Program Manager for Niger and Burkina Faso. He has also worked in Africa for U.S. Non-Governmental Organizations and he is currently Country Director for Plan in Burkina Faso. On September 20, he marked 42 years in Africa.  He has worked in, or visited, all 54 African countries. He has six children and hails from Kansas. His novel, Africa’s Embrace, is scheduled to be published this year. FORTY-SIX YEARS IN THE MAKING: MY FIRST PEACE CORPS STORY by Mark G. Wentling February . . .

The Market Bowl (Ages 5-8) by Jim Averbeck (Cameroon 1990-94) Charlesbridge, $16.95 32 pages [Jim Averbeck in Cameroon ate many bowls of ndole (bitterleaf stew), like the kind the Mama Cecile and Yoyo make in The Market Bowl. He also enjoyed  dishes of boa constrictor, crocodile, and deep-fried termites. He is the author of In a Blue Room, a 2009 Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book.  He is also the author and illustrator of Except If and Oh No, Little Dragon!] Reviewed by Thomas Weck (Ethiopia 1965-67) The Market Bowl is a delightful story with an important message for young, impressionable minds.  Yoyo is an endearing young girl, but she has yet to learn the absolute necessity of honesty and fairness.  By taking an ill-advised shortcut, she puts her whole family’s livelihood in danger.  Through contrition, hard work and more than a little courage, in a drama filled scene, she is able . . .

Winner in 1986 of  the National Book Award Bob Shacochis’s (Eastern Caribbean 1975-76) first book in ten years spans five decades and three continents. According to the pre-press on the novel, “it is an epic, visceral masterwork that traces a global lineage of political, cultural, and personal tumult from WWII to September 11th.” In The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, Shacochis returns to occupied Haiti and writes a  novel about coming of age in a pre 9-11 world.    The book’s flap-copy reads: When humanitarian lawyer Tom Harrington travels to Haiti to investigate the murder of a beautiful and seductive photojournalist, he is confronted with a dangerous landscape riddled with poverty, corruption, and voodoo. It’s the late 1990s, a time of brutal guerrilla warfare and civilian kidnappings, and everyone has secrets. The journalist, whom he knew years before as Jackie Scott, had a bigger investment in Haiti than it seemed, and to make sense of her . . .

The February 25, 2013 issue of The New Yorker has a new short story by Paul Theroux  (Malawi 1963-65) entitled, “The Furies” that is about a man who leaves his wife for a younger woman, and the revenge his ex-wife visits upon him. You can read more (but not the whole story) here. It is a terrific piece of fiction, and we haven’t seen much short fiction lately from Theroux. His next book is on traveling in Africa, The Last Train to Zona Verde, and is due out in May.

[San Francisco has produced many fine poets over the years. I, for one, grew up reading the Beats: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, Neal Cassady, Anne Waldman and Michael McClure. The list goes on and on. They were the poets of the ’50s and early ’60s, and then in 1970 Edward Mycue came to town. Edward Mycue (Ghana 1961-63) had ETed from the Peace Corps because of family needs at home and he returned to the U.S. to work for HEW in Dallas before arriving in San Francisco on June 1, 1970. He joined the new Gay Liberation Movement, began to work for Margrit Roma and Clarence Ricklets’ The New Shakespeare Company, and started publishing his poems. Since 1970 his poetry, criticism, essays and stories have appeared in over 2000 journals, magazines, on the Internet and everywhere literature is read. He is called by many, “one of the best living poets in . . .

The Gringo: A Memoir By J. Grigsby Crawford (Ecuador 2009–11) Wild Elephant Press $15.95 (paperback); $9.99 (Kindle) 225 pages 2013 Reviewed  by Kitty Thuermer (Mali 1977–79) So let’s pretend I’m fresh out of college and that I’ve wanted to join the Peace Corps ever since the 7th grade.  I make an appointment with a recruiter, who is a clean cut guy named Grigsby Crawford, back from serving in Ecuador. We meet in Adams Morgan, Washington D.C. Me: Hey, one of my burning questions – I’ve been reading a lot of scary stuff about safety in the Peace Corps.  Did you feel safe in Ecuador? Grigs: Safe?!  (Laughs) …well, to be honest… I was sent alone to a dangerous outpost in the Wild West of the country and …um, things deteriorated and my host family was threatened – because of me – and armed thugs with machine guns were out to . . .

For more than twenty-five years, Julie Dargis (Morocco 1984-87) has worked with international non-profit organizations in post-conflict environments in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. In Pit Stop in the Paris of Africa she depicts the realities and challenges of living and working in such environments.  On Friday, February 15, 2013, there will be reception and reading by Julie of her book. Julie will recount stories inspired by war-affected  populations rebuilding their lives.  The reception begins at 5 p.m. and Julie will read at 7 p.m. The Book Launch is being held at Gallery 13 in Downtown Minneapolis/Highland Bank Court/Street Level–811 LaSalle Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55402. It is sponsored by American Refuge Committee, World Without Genocide, and Indie House Press. If you can’t make it, check out:www.pitstopintheparisofafrica.com      

Volunteers of America: The Journey of a Peace Corps Teachers by Dennis Carlson (Libya 1968-69) chronicles his time in Libya in the late 1960s. It is the first American account of living through the revolution that brought Gaddafi to power. The author moves from campus protests at the University of Washington in the spring of 1968, to Peace Corps training in Utah and the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, to living and teaching in an isolated village in Libya, to a European summer vacation, to the revolution that led to charges that Peace Corps volunteers were CIA agents, to returning to the U.S. in October, 1969, to witness the anti-war moratorium on the Capital Mall in Washington, D.C. The heart of the story is the author’s own evolving journey as a teacher, during which time he began to question both the official curriculum of English instruction and the broader purposes of teaching . . .

Road Scatter: Poems by Sandra Meek (Botswana 1989–91) Persea Books,$15.95 86 pages 2012 Reviewed by Ann Neelon (Senegal 1978-79) The revolutionary aspect of Sandra Meek’s new collection Road Scatter-in which the poems are focused, although not exclusively, on a daughter’s vigil at her dying mother’s beside-is that it gives us elegy as kinetic sculpture.  Instead of traditional lament, we get clatter, crash and shimmer. It is as if, in each poem, grief plummets like a ball down a shoot, hits a force field of running water and is then channeled to a lever, which flings it onto a piano key, forcing it to set off not just an echoing note but also a flashing light. We get a sense of how living through a death-in the dullness of its seemingly endless repetitions, but also in its unexpected scintillations-is like turning on a grief machine. Grief is not static, but rather . . .

The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption is a story of corporate corruption so far-reaching and devastating it could have been written a hundred years ago by Ida Tarbell or Lincoln Steffens. And as Laurence Leamer (Nepal 1964-66) demonstrates in this captivating tale, because it’s true, it’s scarier than fiction. This nonfiction legal thriller traces the fourteen-year struggle of two lawyers to bring the most powerful coal baron in American history, Don Blankenship, to justice. Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy since the early 1990s, ran an industry that provides nearly half of America’s electric power. But wealth and influence weren’t enough for Blankenship and his company, as they set about destroying corporate and personal rivals, challenging the Constitution, purchasing the West Virginia judiciary, and willfully disregarding safety standards in the company’s mines-in which scores died unnecessarily. As Blankenship hobnobbed with a West Virginia Supreme Court . . .

The RPCV writers who served in China are now seeing their books published in China. Recently River Town (Peter Hessler 1996-98) book on his tour was published on the mainland. In less than a year, it has sold almost as many copies as it sold in the US since it came out in 2001. According to Peter, “Chinese are eager readers of foreign works, and especially of literature, social science texts and academic collections. Translated books account for a huge slice of the market, and domestic writers often take inspiration from them. Maybe this is the fourth goal — bringing a Peace Corps view of the host country back to the host country.” The publisher is also bringing Peter back to China to tour — something that the US publisher has not done. Published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House, River Town has 150,000 copies in print and is described to the Chinese . . .

Death to the Rescue: A Twisting Creek Mystery by R J Huddy (Morocco 1981-83) A Peace Corps Writers Book $15.95 (paperback); $.99 (Kindle) 329 pages October  2012 Reviewed by P. David Searles (CD Philippines & PC/HQ 1971-76) When the USPS dropped off R J Huddy’s Death to the Rescue I was well into reading Jon Meacham’s recent biography of Thomas Jefferson, a work that has been highly praised and is essential reading for anyone who wants to consider himself well read.  I decided to take a short break from it and sample this new book.  Within 20 pages I had concluded “Sorry, Jon, Jefferson is going to have to wait!  It’s a bit like homework, whereas Death is fun.  Huddy’s story is centered around the murder of a prim and proper single woman – a bank loan officer and Sunday School teacher – by, all of the evidence strongly suggests, . . .