Peace Corps writers

In the mail, I received a message that began: As the minutes passed, the recycled air in the fuselage became like old breath. The planeload of Americans shot nervous looks at each other. Pinpricks of sweat forming on skin, cool but quickly warming. Charlotte joked that they had been abandoned, left to suffocate on the tarmac as a message to all foreigners. They crowded around the windows to look at their new home. The skyline was made of Soviet-built apartment compounds, sooty smokestacks. They saw a man from the ground crew idling on the tarmac. The man looked up, saw their faces pressed against the portholes. They slapped the glass and called to him. He smiled, revealing rotten teeth, but made no move to assist. The temperature soared. So begins National Magazine Award finalist Christopher Howard’s second novel, Tea of Ulaanbaatar: the story of disaffected Peace Corps Volunteer Warren, who . . .

You Never Try, You Never Know: Six Year in Liberia by Ruth Jacobson (Liberia 1971-77) Court Street Press $18.95, paperback; $6.95 e-book 402 pages 2011 Reviewed by Geraldine Kennedy (Liberia 1962–64) RUTH JACOBSON AND HER HUSBAND HAROLD were in their 50s when they joined the Peace Corps in 1971. By then they were well experienced in their professions — she a nurse, he a mechanic. Their two daughters were grown. They were just the kind of people both the Peace Corps and host countries needed and valued. Well, it seems one of them was more valued than the other — we’ll get to that. You Never Try, You Never Know is a collection of letters Ruth wrote to family members, primarily to her mother, about the Jacobson’s six years in Liberia. It is a one-way correspondence to people she loved about a life she embraced. During their orientation and training . . .

A Voter’s Handbook: Effective Solutions to America’s Problems by James P. Gray (Costa Rica 1966–68) The Forum Press 200 pages $17.95 2010 Reviewed by Ken Hill (Turkey 1965-67)   A VOTER’S HANDBOOK poses solutions for a myriad of public policy issues based on the assertion that government is the central problem which can be fixed by reducing government’s span and resources. Shrink government; grow entrepreneurship; expand “choice” and go back to “American Fundamentals,” says Mr. Gray. In the process, thankfully, he poses some practical approaches to a few of today’s most vexing issues; illegal immigration, for example, and treating the mentally ill who are not institutionalized.   A lawyer and judge, Mr. Gray has spent his life in the law, wandering occasionally into politics. A Republican candidate for Congress in 1998, he later ran as a Libertarian candidate in the 2004 California Senatorial race. In 2009, Mr. Gray retired after 25 years as . . .

“I had just finished my MFA,” Christina wrote me recently. “I didn’t have a job. I was twenty-six years old, between boyfriends, and had no burning ideas for a novel. I was too old to live in my parents’ house, or so it seemed to me at the time. When I flash back, I realize I was quite conflicted about being a writer, despite what my heart had always told me. Perhaps because I was born in the JFK era, joining the Peace Corps seemed a perfect opportunity suddenly, no longer just a pipe dream. Just in making the decision to join, I felt a sense of urgency that was new to me.” Christina would go to Eastern Europe as a PCV, to Szeged, Hungary, a city close to the Romaian border. She writes that her experience over two years and subsequent years working in the region was an amazing education. . . .

Maobadi (Photographs) by Kevin Bubriski (Nepal 1975–79) Himal Books $55.00 96 pages 2011 • The Orange Tree (Novel) by Martin R. Ganzglass (Somalia 1966–68) Peace Corps Writers $14.95 421 pages May 2011 • Rogue Elephants (Peace Corps novel) by Dan Grossman (Niger 1992–94) Lulu $22.98 299 pages 2010 • Soft Corps (Peace Corps poems) by Dan Grossman (Niger 1992–94) Lulu $11.95 71 pages 2010 • Feather: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson (Uganda 1993–95) Basic Books $25.99 338 pages 2011 • Years On: And Other Travel Essays by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) iUniverse $18.95 211 pages 2011 • Soda Springs: Love, Sex and Civil Rights by Terry Marshall (Philippines 1965-68) Friesen Press Hardback $28.99; Paper $19.13; Kindle, $7.79 363 pages 2010 • Souled Out: A Memoir of War and Inner Peace by Michael S. Orban (Gabon 1976–78) Minute Man Press $17.00 200 pages February 2011 • . . .

Footprints in the Mud: A Peace Corps Volunteer’s 40+ Years of Ties to Thailand by Michael R. MacLeod (Thailand 1964–68) Third Place Press 296 pages $16.95 (to purchase contact: mikermacleod@comcast.net 2011 Reviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BRIDGE between the original Peace Corps and a changing institution. Today, as the Peace Corps reevaluates itself, it is also a guiding handrail while crossing the fast moving river of doubt. The author served in Thailand from 1964 until 1968, entering months after JFK’s death and leaving months after the deaths of MLK and RFK. This was not just a tumultuous time at home with hundreds of cities in flames each summer, it was also a time of war abroad — very near MacLeod’s stilted wooden home in a far-off village. Originally, Peace Corps Volunteers were trained in the U.S. and shipped abroad to serve, much like the . . .

From the Boston Globe, June 12, 2011: Toughest job you’ll never love by Adam Langer Globe Correspondent (Luci Gutierrez for The Boston Globe) For the past 50 years, the Peace Corps has provided fertile material for a roster of impressive alumni, who include such authors as Kent Haruf, Bob Shacochis, and Paul Theroux. But I wouldn’t expect to see the name Christopher R. Howard, author of “Tea of Ulaanbaatar,” on a Peace Corps recruitment brochure any time soon. Using his brief stint as a volunteer in Mongolia during the late 1990s as his jumping-off point, Howard has produced a debut novel that won’t attract many socially conscious do-gooders to the Corps, but could well appeal to marginally employed slackers seeking to indulge in sex tourism and drug abuse. The Mongolia of [Christopher] Howard’s novel is a memorably bleak, fetid, and sinister place, a likely contender for the world’s least inviting . . .

Cynthia Morrison Phoel (Bulgaria 1994-96)  will be reading from Cold Snap: Bulgaria Stories at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, on Sunday, June 26, at 2:00 p.m. Of the book, Dallas Morning News contributor Anne Morris wrote: “It’s not unusual for a returning Peace Corps volunteer to write a book . . . Cynthia Morrison Phoel’s debut collection of six stories set in a Bulgarian village represents that kind of fiction at its best.” For more information, check out www.cynthiaphoel.com, or read the review of her great collection of stories on our site.

Thor Hanson (Uganda 1993–95) who wrote the wonderful The Impenetrable Forest a few years ago, his Peace Corps memoir of Uganda, has a new book, Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle, published by Basic Books this month. In a review in this weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, Jonathan Rosen, the editorial director of NextbooksInc. writes “Mr. Hanson may be a scientist but he writes like a man who believes in the value of a story.” Rosen goes onto say a lot of wonderful things about Feathers, including, “. . . Mr. Hanson knows it isn’t just the bird at the far end of the binoculars but the human being at the near end that matters, and he is writing as much about the human urge to understand, appreciate and appropriate the wild world as he writing about feathers, which he calls, in his subtitle, a ‘natural miracle.’”

One Hand Does Not Catch A Buffalo: 50 Years of Amazing Peace Corps Stories: Volume One, Africa Edited by Aaron Barlow (Togo 1988–1990); Series editor Jane Albritton (India 1967–1969) Travelers’ Tales May 2011 452 pages $18.95 Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000–2002, Madagascar 2002–2003) ONE HAND DOES NOT CATCH A BUFFALO: 50 Years of Amazing Peace Corps Stories: Volume One, Africa is the first of a series of four anthologies celebrating and recording Peace Corps’ accomplishments and contributions to the world through its first half century of life. The idea for this massive compendium came to Jane Albritton in 2007, and must have seemed to anyone willing to listen to her at the time an endeavor nearly as gargantuan, daunting, and Quixotic as the founding of the Peace Corps itself. Four volumes to cover the regions of the world where Volunteers have served — Africa, The Americas, The Heart . . .

The Gambling Master of Shanghai and other tales of suspense by Joan Richter (Staff spouse — Kenya 1965–67) Peace Corps Writers April 2011 255 pages $15 Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000–02; Madagascar 2002–03) JOAN RICHTER LIVED FOR TWO YEARS in East Africa, where her husband was deputy director of the Peace Corps/Kenya program, and later she consulted for Peace Corps/Washington on the role of staff wives overseas. But mostly, Joan Richter is a writer. Joan Richter’s The Gambling Master of Shanghai and other tales of suspense, is a finely wrought collection of seventeen stories, a page-turning illumination of an enviable, forty-year writing career. The book is handsome in design and illustration, and boasts a brooding cover of a birdcage in a darkened alleyway that perfectly captures the disturbingly noire tone of these master works. It’s clear that Peace Corps Writers, which chose to publish Ms. Richter’s collection as . . .

Publishers Weekly has a short piece this week on the new Concord ePress  which is re-publishing two novels by Richard Wiley.  The Concord Free Press was cofounded in 2008 by novelist Stona Fitch with the purpose of giving away books for free to readers, who in turn are asked to make a charitable donation to a group or person.  Concord Free Press does not pay the writers who publish with them; the books are published in limited editions of 3,000 and bookstores that work with CFP give the books away. Now the press has launched the Concord ePress, a digital publishing program that will offer titles for sale, split the money 50/50 with writers and use its share to support its free paperback print editions. CeP is releasing e-book editions of two of  Wiley’s novels. Other writers publishing with CFP include Russell Banks, Tom Perrotta, Francine Prose, Hamilton Fish, Joyce Carol Oates and more. The . . .

At this year’s BookExpo held in New York at the Jarvis Center, I slipped into the Google Books panel discussion to “parse the significance of the e-book explosion and to explain Google Books’ position in it” as Publishers Weekly BEA Show Daily stated on Thursday, May 26, 2011. In the crowded room, four publishing execs were quizzed on the impact and importance of the e-book format. First question up was one of discovery. We know that ‘traditional’ readers find out about new books and authors by “browsing in a physical store.” What we have today is a “system that’s ‘good for hunters, but not as good for gatherers.” You can find a book, if you know what you want, one of the panelists stated. Google Book’s director of strategic partnerships, Tom Turvey, made the comment that “all book recommendation engines suck” and that there ‘isn’t an algorithm that can compete . . .

The Caddie Who Won The Masters by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962–64) Peace Corps Writers $13.50 316 pages 2011 Review by Roland Merullo (Micronesia 1979–80) IN JOHN COYNE’S SPLENDID new golf novel, The Caddie Who Won the Masters, all of the action, from first page to last, takes place at Augusta National Golf Club, site of what is arguably the most famous golf tournament on earth. Because of this, and because of Coyne’s intricate knowledge of the golf course and Masters’ history, Augusta itself shares the spotlight as the book’s main character. For those of us lucky enough to have walked those hallowed grounds, it seems perfectly appropriate that the manicured fairways and slippery greens should leap out of the background of the story and take center stage. The plot revolves around the other main character, Tim Alexander, an aging amateur who earns a Masters’ appearance by virtue of a single . . .

Ask What You Can Do: Our Days in the Early Peace Corps by James C. Stewart (Philippines 1962–64) Create Space $24.95 672 pages 2011 Reviewed by Maureen Carroll (Philippines 1961–63) THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE PEACE CORPS seems to have brought out the secret memoirist in all of us. Jim Stewart was one of the 600 to 700 Volunteers who arrived in the Philippines during the first two years of the program — the largest in the world at that time. Stewart was in Group IV, arriving in the Philippines in June of 1962, on the heels of Groups I, II and III which had begun arriving in October of 1961, each group trained in sequence at Penn State University. The groups kept on coming every few months despite the fact that the job of “elementary school aide” had turned out to be a “non-job,” a term used by first . . .