Peace Corps writers – Page 6 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Once Again: Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience

Mar 13 2023

Five Great Short Stories About the Peace Corps Experience The Mending Fields by Bob Shacochis (Eastern Caribbean 1975–76) I WAS ASSIGNED to the Island of Saint Kit in the West Indies. Once on an inter-island plane, I sat across the aisle from one of my new colleagues, an unfriendly, overserious young woman. She was twenty-four, twenty-five . . . we were all twenty-four, twenty-five. I didn’t know her much or like her. As the plane banked over the island, she pressed against the window, staring down at the landscape. I couldn’t see much of her face, just enough really to recognize an expression of pain. Below us spread an endless manicured lawn, bright green and lush of sugarcane, the island’s main source of income. Each field planted carefully to control erosion. Until that year, Saint Kit’s precious volcanic soil had been bleeding into the sea; somehow they had resolved . . .

“Poets Take Note” — Philip Dacey (Nigeria)

Mar 06 2023

by Philip Dacey (Nigeria 1963-65) • Peace Corps Volunteers, returned or current, who are turning their experiences into poetry and looking for appropriate publishing outlets, ought to know about WordTech Communications of Cincinnati, publisher of my most recent book. Owned and operated by Kevin Walzer and Lori Jareo, WordTech specializes in poetry, utilizes print-on-demand technology, but — and this is important — is not a vanity press. The publishers are determined to make poetry profitable for all concerned without requiring subsidization by the poets themselves. One sign of their seriousness is their ability to attract contemporary American poets who have a significant following already. Their list includes Barry Spacks, Allison Joseph, Frederick Turner, Rhina K. Espaillat, and Nick Carbo. Jareo and Walzer are in fact well aware of the automatic association of p.o.d. technology and vanity publishing. They aim explicitly at severing that connection, demonstrating by their own example that . . .

Dan Douglas (Botswana) found the love of his life in the Peace Corps

Mar 05 2023

Dan Douglas first told this story on stage at the Des Moines Storytellers Project’s “Love.” The Des Moines Storytellers Project is a series of storytelling events in which community members work with Register journalists to tell true, first-person stories live on stage. Dan traveled the world in search of adventure. He also found the love of his life. In January 1969, I was sitting in the staff room at a secondary school in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana in southern Africa, waiting for the first staff meeting of the term to start. I was a brand-new Peace Corps volunteer assigned to teach English and history. I had just finished a master’s degree in history at the University of Missouri and decided to take a break from academia and see a bit of the world — hence the Peace Corps. I had spent the previous summer living with my parents . . .

The Dark Side of the Hut, 50 Years Later by John Sundman (Senegal)

Mar 03 2023

As a Peace Corps Volunteer (Senegal 1974-76) assigned to a rural development program I was posted to Fanaye Diery (‘fah-nigh jeery’), a HalPulaar village of about 500 people in the Senegal River valley, arriving there in late spring, 1974. (The HalPulaar people take their name from their language: HalPulaar means ‘Pulaar speaker’.) In Fanaye, most houses were made of adobe. Some had thatched roofs; the larger ones had roofs made of adobe held up by wooden timbers. In anticipation of my arrival, the people of Fanaye had prepared a thatched hut for my residence. It was about 10’ square, with two window openings and a wooden door. Somehow I acquired a small table and a chair. I later hired someone to make a little bookshelf for me. I slept on a mat on the floor. The only other amenity was a terra cotta jug that held about a gallon of water, which . . .

OFF THE RAILS: Weird, Wicked, Wacky & Funny Stories by Jerome McFadden (Morocco)

Feb 27 2023

What happens if no one else sees the creatures calling to you from your back yard? Or your perfect crime is not as perfect as you planned? What if a city-dweller on vacation meets a tribe of head hunters in the middle of the jungle? Or if the best player on the boys’ high school sports teams . . . is a girl? What happens if everything you thought you understood goes . . . OFF THE RAILS? In this eclectic collection of twenty-six stories, multi-award winning author, Jerome W. McFadden, takes a warped view of robbers, gang-bangers, killers, cowboys, dead people (who might not know they’re dead), and the idiosyncracies of rural life in the mythical town of East Jesus, Texas. These fast-paced tales explore the satirical edges of crime, paranoia, human foibles, and the afterlife. Some of the stories are weird, some are wicked, some are wacky, . . .

NAKED poems by Bobba Cass (Nigeria)

Feb 27 2023

From creative writing at Leicester 2/25/23 Bobba Cass is a gay man, father and grandad. He grew up in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. where he benefitted from education for all, not just the selected. He now lives in Leicester. He has a liberal arts degree from Willamette University, and advanced degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and De Montfort University. Transformative was Peace Corps and subsequent life in Nigeria, 1963-1967. In addition to travelling along the cadences of poetry, he has written a collection of creature fables for children in the series, From Gramps with Love, as part of Creatures Creatives Collective. He has completed three semi-autobiographical novels taking himself from childhood in Seattle to being evacuated from Nsukka, Nigeria at the beginning of the Biafran War. His new collection of poems is one of a series of limited editions of poems including four and twenty, fourteen and Leicester Skies. Websites are here and here. About naked by Bobba Cass naked is a collection . . .

John Givens (Korea) — IRISH WALLED TOWNS

Feb 26 2023

Native Californian John Givens teaches fiction writing in Dublin. Givens was a Peace Corps Volunteer in South Korea. He studied art and language in Kyoto for four years. Givens attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and graduated with an MFA in creative writing. He worked in Tokyo as a writer and editor for eight years. Givens also worked at K2 Design in NYC, and at Digitas and Landor Associates in San Francisco. Givens’ published novels are: Sons of the Pioneers, A Friend in the Police; and Living Alone. His short story collection, The Plum Rains, was published in Dublin by The Liffey Press. Short stories have appeared in literary magazines in the US, Europe and Asia. His non-fiction publications include Irish Walled Towns and A Guide to Dublin Bay: Mirror to the City. . Irish Walled Towns John Givens (Korea 1967-69) Liffey Press Publisher August 2008 280 pages $79.98 (Hardback)

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 . . .

Review | GROWING MANGOS IN THE DESERT by Katherine Baird (Mauritania)

Jan 16 2023

Growing Mangos in the Desert: A Memoir of Life in a Mauritanian Village by Katherine Baird (Mauritania 1984–86) Apprentice House Press 2022 380 pages $19.99 (paperback), $32.99 (hard cover), $6.49 (Kindle) Reviewed by Lucinda Wingard (Nigeria 1966 – 68) • Among more than two dozen young volunteers trained for agricultural service in Mauritania in 1984, Katherine Baird was one of ten remaining by her second year. She had survived the rigors of wielding her short-handled hoe in blistering heat, had adapted to eating meals from a common bowl with her neighbors, and had successfully threaded through baffling local hierarchies. Mauritania needed Peace Corps to help staff a fledgling initiative funded with foreign money: growing rice along a desolate part of the Senegal River. Baird brought no experience to help her fulfill this work, but her diligent note-taking and detailed records show she pitched into her assignment with a will. “Keyti” . . .

Novels by A. J. Valdois (Republic of Georgia)

Jan 10 2023

Stone of Athaen by A.J. Valdois (Republic of Georgia 2006-08) Independently Published 479 pages September 2021 $14.99 (Paperback), $3.99 (Kindle) “Someone is manipulating Kiara… but who?” Smuggler Kiara Antoria has been living as a drifter and an alien in a foreign country ever since the brutal conquest of her homeland, Beldane. The last thing she wants is to face her past, but abetted by a mysterious mage, a local politician is forcing her to journey back to Beldane on a trivial errand. Kiara will do anything she can to escape his control, but the errand is not as trivial as it seems. As she becomes entangled in the conspiracies of the magical city of Shinar, Kiara must confront her past in order to rediscover a destiny she thought she had lost forever… or die trying. • The Channeler’s Daughter by A. J. Valdois (Republic of Georgia 2006-08) Trelerre Books . . .

The Volunteer Who Became America’s Premier Sports Writer — Arnold Hano (Costa Rica)

Jan 03 2023

by Jerry Norris (Colombia 1963-65) • Arnold Hano served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica, 1991-93, after achieving nation-wide recognition for his coverage of the professional baseball sports world as an editor, novelist, biographer and journalist. Both he and his wife Bonnie served as community development volunteers. Arnold earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Long Island University, graduating cum laude in 1941. Shortly after, he became a copy boy for the New York Daily News. He was tasked with providing captions for the photos he brought back from professional baseball games. This afforded the nineteen-year-old, undreamt of opportunities, to chronicle baseball history. Interrupted in these endeavors by the US entry into WW II, he participated in various campaigns in the Aleutian Islands. After his discharge, he returned to New York and a career in book publishing, first as managing editor with Bantam, then as Editor-Chief with Lion Books. In . . .

Review — THE VEGETABLE GROWS AND THE LION ROARS by Gary R. Lindberg (Ivory Coast)

Dec 18 2022

The Vegetable Grows and the Lion Roars: My Peace Corps Service by Gary R. Lindberg (Ivory Coast 1966-68) Self-Published 214 pages March 2022 $ 7.49 (Kindle); $15.67 (Paperback) Reviewed by D.W. Jefferson (El Salvador (1974-76) & Costa Rica (1976-77) • Peace Corps memoirs of 1960s-era volunteers are like precious gems that become more and more valuable as more of those folks pass on. Gary Lindberg wrote this memoir about his Peace Corps service in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) from 1965-68. Lindberg taught primary school students and teachers various gardening techniques as part of a school gardens program. The memoir includes how he decided to apply for Peace Corps, how he trained, his project, his daily activities, and the friends he made while he was there. He also shares highlights from the travels he took when on vacation breaks, such as his experience on a safari and his visit . . .

“Memoirs of a White Savior” by Jonathan Zimmerman (Nepal)

Dec 10 2022

Thanks for the ‘head’s up’ from Alana DeJoseph’s (Mali 1992–94) by Jonathan Zimmerman (Nepal 1983-85) Published in Liberties Fall 2022 • Last year, a student came to my office hours to discuss her post-graduation plans. She said she wanted to travel, teach, and write. “How about joining the Peace Corps?” I suggested. She grimaced. “The Peace Corps is problematic,” she said. I replied the way I always do when a student uses that all-purpose put-down. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “I don’t want to be a white savior,” she explained. “That’s pretty much the worst thing you can be.” Indeed it is. The term “white savior” became commonplace in 2012, when the Nigerian-American writer and photographer Teju Cole issued a series of tweets — later expanded into an article in The Atlantic — denouncing American do-gooder campaigns overseas, especially in Africa. His immediate target was the “KONY 2012” video . . .

HAUSALAND DIVIDED by William F.S. Miles (Niger)

Nov 25 2022

How have different forms of colonialism shaped societies and their politics? William F. S. Miles (Niger 1977-79) focuses on the Hausa-speaking people of West Africa whose land is still split by an arbitrary boundary established by Great Britain and France at the turn of the century. In 1983 Miles returned as a Fulbright scholar to the region where he had served as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Already fluent in the Hausa language, he established residence in carefully selected twin villages on either side of the border separating the Republic of Niger from the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Over the next year, and then during subsequent visits, he traveled by horseback between the two places, conducting archival research, collecting oral testimony, and living the ethnographic life. Miles argues that the colonial imprint of the British and the French can still be discerned more than a generation after the conferring of . . .

One of the Best Thriller and Mystery Novels of 2022 – Richard Lipez (Ethiopia)

Nov 18 2022

The Washington Post has selected Knock Off the Hat by Richard Stevenson (Dick Lipez (Ethiopia 1962-64) as one of the 12 Best Thriller and Mystery Novels of 2022. Dick Lipez, writing as Richard Stevenson, died this year, shortly before the publication of this standout. (Stevenson, writing under his real name, Richard Lipez, was also a frequent Washington Post reviewer.) The story — In post-World War II Philadelphia, detective Clifford Waterman is trying to help a man charged with “disorderly conduct” following a raid at a gay bar. The seemingly small case sends Waterman into a world of corruption involving a dangerous judge who preys on the city’s gay population. Knock off the Hat Richard Stevenson (Richard Lipez – Ethiopia 1962-64) Amble Press, 2022 222 pages 17.99 (paperback), $8.69 (Kindle)