Peace Corps writers

Randall Wood (Nicaragua 1998-’00) is an engineer, author, teacher and author of two books, Moon Nicaragua (a best-selling travel guidebook to Nicaragua) and Living Abroad in Nicaragua. Randy and his Nicaraguan wife Ericka and their two children live today in Dakar, Senegal where he works for the Millennium Challenge Corporation, thought he is still president of the Amigos de Nicaragua RPCV group and in many ways he will never leave Central America. He wrote me recently about his new book, The Dictator’s Handbook: a practical manual for the aspiring tyrant, “I wanted to dedicate the book to Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega because watching that guy in action really nailed down the difficulty of helping poor people when their government is doing everything in its power to prevent it,” he said. “Studying Ortega and then other dictators made clear these clowns are all doing the same things – subverting the constitution, . . .

The Raft S.A. Bodeen (Tanzania 1989-90) Feiwel and Friends (an imprint of Macmillan) 231 pagesAugust $16.99 (Hardcover); $9.99 (Kindle) 2012 Reviewed by Reilly Ridgell (Micronesia 1971-73) I’m not much into reading “young adult” literature.  Oh I read some Hardy boys mysteries and maybe a  few others like that but by high school I gravitated quickly to the classics and works considered more “hip.”  So I wasn’t sure how I’d find S.A. Bodeen’s survival story, The Raft.  What a pleasant surprise it was.  The writing is strong and purposeful, the characters interesting, the situation fascinating.  The story is told in the first person, usually a red flag but Bodeen pulls it off well, by Robie Mitchell, a 15 year old girl who teeters between common sense and being a bit of an airhead.  But I guess that’s what comes with being 15.  She has spent much of her teen years isolated . . .

Michael McCone (Malawi CD 1963-64), who is on the board of this California publishing house founded in 1974 by Malcolm Margolin, has published a beautiful little book entitled: Everyday Dogs: A Perpetual Calendar for Birthday& Other Notable Dates by Mary Scott and Susan Snyder,Heybooks, $14.95 The contents are from the Bancraoft Library on the UC/Berkeley campus. As Mike writes, “What do Gertrude Stein, Jack London, John Muir, and Queen Victoria all have in common with us?” Well, they all have a “cherished unbreakable bond of friendship between canine and human graces all of our days.”  The photos are linked with literary quotes about canines.

In February 1962, Earle and Rhoda Brooks (Ecuador 1962-64) left home in Illinois to become PCVs in  Manta, Ecuador. Their book  The Barrios of Manta: A Personal Account of the Peace Corps in Ecuador was published by New American Library in 1965. It was one of the first two books written by Peace Corps Volunteers. The other was To The Peace Corps, With Love by Arnold Zeitlin (Ghana 1961-62) published by Doubleday also in 1965. Earle and Rhoda begin their story with their decision to enlist as PCVs. They were assigned to a community development project in Manta, a fishing village on the coast of Ecuador. The jacket of their first edition (a photo of Rhoda embracing an Ecuadorian woman,) was on the cover of National Geographic Magazine in September, 1964 (Vol. 126, No. 3). That issue featured the Peace Corps, Sarge Shriver, Earle and Rhoda Brooks, as well as PCVs in Bolivia, Tanganyika (as it was . . .

As editor of Mediabistro Publishing, Jason Boog (Guatemala 2000-02) curates publishing events, and shapes the digital publishing curriculum at MediaBistro.com. He also edits the GalleyCat blog, and hosts the daily Morning Media Menu podcast. Before MediaBistro.com, Jason was an investigative reporter at Judicial Reports, and a publishing blogger for Know More Media. His work has appeared in The Believer, Granta, Salon.com, The Revealer, and Peace Corps Writers. As part of Mediabistro Literary Festival & Workshops, Jason will be leading a conference session via on How To Build A Social Media Platform for Your Book. Unfortunately registration for the workshop is closed.

Principles vs. Principal: Is There Room for “Pay to Play” in Volunteerism  by Brian Holler (Turkmenistan 2010-12) If I had one piece of advice for incoming Volunteers, it would be to focus on the “What is Peace Corps?” section of language training. Like most of my brethren, I’ve spent my fair share of time explaining what an American is doing here. In Turkmenistan, a country that values hospitality above all else, where people will feed and shelter a stranger, the practices of volunteerism and charity are still foreign concepts. People will do anything for their neighbor, but are skeptical of the intentions of someone that has come from another country only to assist their community. In the developed world, formal acts of philanthropy require little tangible reciprocity. Different countries have different cultural norms though; transaction costs may be different. The question is: when faced with more “concrete” operational requirements, how . . .

Rajeev Goyal (Nepal 2000-02) has written, The Springs of Namje. It is being published by Beacon Press this coming September. Rajeev says  the book “took me seven months to write and it spans personal experiences over the last ten years working in rural Nepal, initially as a Peace Corps Volunteer.” The first part of the book is about how he built a two-stage water pumping project in Namje, despite an escalating Maoist war, through the ingenuity of a village carpenter with a ninth grade education. He writes about his twenty visits back to the village while a law student at NYU, and how the water project transformed the community in complex ways none of them expected, and what lessons were learned from that. The second part of the book details his work with (and dealing with!) the NPCA, campaigning in Washington and across the U.S. He writes about driving around the country, meeting . . .

The Lower River Paul Theroux (Nyasaland/Malawi 1963-1965) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 323 pages Hardcover $25 May 2012 Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) PAUL THEROUX HAS HAD A LONG and storied career. After collaborating with Moses on the travel sections of the Old Testament, he then wrote a novel about the writing of Tristram Shandy, which he witnessed, before following up with a non-fiction book retracing the retracing of his quinquireme voyage from Nineveh to distant Ophir, scrimshawing notes the whole way. Later, he had a tragic falling out with both Johnson and Bierce concerning ‘pled’ versus ‘pleaded’ before shaking hands with Mr. & Mrs. Lech Walesa, all drunk, at the marriage of the maharani of East Timor. In the same calendar year. While contributing to Smithsonian. Or something like that. I believe that The Lower River is the fourth book I’ve reviewed by Theroux in the past . . .

In the double issue (July 9 & 16) of The New Yorker, Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) weights in with a Talk of the Town item on wasta,  the term for ‘connections’ in the Arab world. Peter tells the story of Mohamed Morsi, not the new president, but ‘another’ Mohamed Morsi (Hessler says is a distinctive name) who Peter met at the headquarters of the Freedom and Justice Party in downtown Cario… “Two Sundays ago, ninety minutes after Mohamed Morsi was named the winner of  the first free Presidentail election in Egyptian history. ” In his short piece, Peter tells one man’s story, and at the same time he tells us a lot about what is going on on the ground in Cairo. He takes an incident: this man in nearly a hundred degree heat walked an hour from El Madabegh to the headquarters of the Muslin Brotherhood to cash in on wasta because he didn’t have . . .

Bulo Burte Blues by Bob Criso (Nigeria & Somalia 1966-68) From the moment the plane landed in Mogadishu, I was a stranger in a strange land. I was a lame duck, a refugee from Nigeria. Evacuated during the Biafran War with eight months left of my two years, I was given the option of going to another country in Africa. I chose Somalia. After adjusting to the hot and buggy tropics, I arrived in a dry and sterile desert. Just when my Igbo had become serviceable, I had to try to decipher Somali. Ask me anything about the history of Nigeria and I might know the answer. But Somalia?   My first stop was the Peace Corps office where I overheard a Volunteer yelling, threatening to kill himself if they didn’t get him out of “this fucking country” within twenty-four hours. It was jolting. I was told Somalia had the . . .

I am always in the need of anyone who would like to review books for our site: www.peacecorpsworldwide.org. If you are up to reviewing novels, non-fiction, poetry, memoirs, etc., please let me know. I’ll send you the book (that’s you payment, small but nice) with a letter of instruction. Just let me know the type of book(s) that interest you. For example. On my desk today, I have The South American Expeditions, 1540-1545 written by Alvar Nunz Cabeza de Vaca (translated with notes by RPCV Baker H. Morrow), The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 written by RPCV Scott Zesch, and The Immanence of God in the Tropics (Stories) by RPCV Rosen. We only review books by RPCVs and I get 2-3 a week. One thing about RPCVs….they have a lot to say! The books self published and academically published, as well as, commercially published. I . . .

• The Lower River (novel) by Paul Theroux (Malawai 1963-65) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25 pages May 2012 Lost and Found in Macedonia: A Journey to Unexpected Places by Marilyn Wheeler (Macedonia 2004–06) Park Place Publications price pages 2012 Dodging Machetes: How I Survived Forbidden Love, Bad Behavior, and the Peace Corps in Fiji by Will Lutwick (Fiji 1968-70) Peace Corps Writers price: $15.95 pages: 266 2012 Sendero: the Path Back (Novel) John G. Rouse III (Peru 1966-68; Ecuador APCD 1971-72); DR Republic APCD 1972-74) CreateSpace, $9.45; Kindle $1.15 301 pages April 2012 African Son William J. Hemminger (Senegal 1973-75) University Press of America $24.99 104 pages 2012 Cooper’s Promise by Timothy Jay Smith (Program Consultant: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine and Armenia) iUniverse, $15.95 209 pages April, 2011 The Labyrinth (Children’s Book (Ages 4-8) by Thomas Weck (Ethiopia 1965-67) and Peter Weck Lima Bear Press, $15.95 40 pages August . . .

African Son William J. Hemminger (Senegal 1973–75) University Press of America, $24.95 104 pages 2012 Review by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993–96) WILLIAM HEMMINGER, PH.D. IS LEARNED AND GIFTED in many areas, as a poet, pianist/composer, teacher, translator and gardener. He has a great mind, yet what comes through in African Son is his heart. This is a man who knows how to love. He writes tenderly about his wife, Jill, his daughters Molly and Johanna and, most delightfully, he writes with sympathetic love about the many Africans he meets on his journeys, from Senegal, where he was a Peace Corps Volunteer, to Malawi and Cameroon, where he was a Fulbright scholar, and to Zimbabwe and Madagascar as a visiting academician. Hemminger is a poetic, masterful writer. The opening sentence in African Son is “The death of a child is the worst, and I felt somehow responsible.” He’s talking about . . .

A Breeze in Bulgaria by Bruce McDonald (2002-04) BookBrewer $21.29 (paperback), $6.99 (Kindle) 341 pages February 2012 Reviewed by Ken Hill (Turkey 1965-67) THEY HAD PLANNED THEIR RETIREMENT and a move from California to Colorado to be closer to family. But Bruce and Stormy McDonald happened to glance at a Peace Corps recruitment ad in the summer of 2001 that changed their plans — and their lives. Within a year they were in Bulgaria, their great new adventure had begun.  In ended too soon!  Not long after the beginning of their second year of service a frightening event intervened. Theirs was an extraordinary experience, shared masterfully in A Breeze in Bulgaria. They were highly experienced, strongly motivated, “older” Volunteers. Bruce had completed career #1 as an Air Force aviator, and #2 in the defense industry before he and Stormy were infected by the Peace Corps bug. Stormy had worked in . . .

Peace Corps Writers Awards for Books Published in 2011 It is time to nominate your favorite Peace Corps book published in 2011. Make your nomination(s) in the comment section following this announcement so people can see what books have been recognized. You may nominate your own book; books written by friends; books written by total strangers. The books can be about the Peace Corps or on any topic. The books must have been published in 2011. The awards will be announced in August. Thank you for nominating your favorite book written by a PCV, RPCV or Peace Corps Staff. A framed certificate and money are given to the winners. Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award First given in 1990, the Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award was named to honor Paul Cowan, a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Ecuador. Cowan wrote The Making of An Un-American about his experiences as a Volunteer in Latin America in . . .