Peace Corps writers

For millennia Europeans believed that the world consisted of three parts: Europe, Africa, and Asia. They drew the three continents in countless shapes and sizes on their maps, but occasionally they hinted at the existence of a “fourth part of the world,” a mysterious, inaccessible place, separated from the rest by a vast expanse of ocean. It was a land of myth — until 1507, that is, when Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, two obscure scholars working in the mountains of eastern France, made it real. Columbus had died the year before convinced that he had sailed to Asia, but Waldseemüller and Ringmann, after reading about the Atlantic discoveries of Columbus’s contemporary Amerigo Vespucci, came to a startling conclusion: Vespucci had reached the fourth part of the world. To celebrate his achievement, Waldseemüller and Ringmann printed a huge map, for the first time showing the New World surrounded by water . . .

Back in 2004 John Perkins (Ecuador 1968-71) published Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.It  became something of a best seller, this story of his life and the conspiracies he was part of around the world after his Peace Corps years. Now John is back with a new book, Hoodwinked. It is out today.  The book  John says is “by far the most important book I have written.” This is his fourth book.  Here is what John has Hoodwinked is all about: It provides the facts – and many personal stories from economic hit men, jackals, business execs, politicians, and educators – behind the following Eight Key points: 1. The US – in fact the world – has been stolen by the very wealthy and powerful, the corporatocracy. 2. This has created a failed system – unsustainable, unjust, unstable, dangerous. 3. The cause is a mutant, viral form of capitalism – what I call “Predatory Capitalism” that began with President Reagan and . . .

The handful of Peace Corps countries on the ‘eastern rim’ has generated a number of books that rate at the top of any list of ‘good’ Peace Corps novels and memoirs. Right up there are books that deserve to be read again, including Roland Merullo’s (Micronesia 1979-81) novel, Leaving Losapas, and P.F. Kluge’s (Micronesia 1967-69) memoir The Edge of Paradise: America in Micronesia. Many of you have read, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze River by Peter Hessler (China 1996-98) and another member of the “China Gang,” Mike Meyer’s (China  1995-97) author of The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed. The Peace Corps goes back a long way in this region. The Philippines and Thailand were among the very first Peace Corps countries. From this region, Peace Corps writers have produced many historical books (maybe this is where all the smart PCVs were sent?) but . . .

Interesting Times: Writing from a Turbulent Decade by George Packer (Togo 1982–83) is published this month from Farrar Straus Giroux. It comes out on November 17, but the book is in stores now. Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, which was named one of the ten best books of 2005 by The New York Times Book Review. He is the author of two novels, The Half Man and Central Square, and two works of nonfiction, The Village of Waiting, which is his Peace Corps memoir, and Blood of the Liberals, which won the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and the 2001 Peace Corps Writers Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award. His play Betrayed, based on a New Yorker article, won the 2008 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Off-Broadway Play. His reporting has also won four Overseas Press Club . . .

Interesting Times Writing from a Turbulent Decade by George Packer (Togo 1982-83) Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28.00 409 pages November 2009 The Incarnation of CatMan Billy By Will Jordan (Senegal & Liberia 1971-72) The Press of Light, $12.99 September 2009 The Broken Teaglass By Emily Arsenault (South Africa 2004-06) Delacorte Press, $25.00 370 pages September 2009 By Heart: Reflections of a Rust Belt Bard (poetry) by Philip Brady (Zaire 1980-82) University of Tennessee Press, $29.95 180 pages November 2008 Joe & Azat By Jesse Lonergan (Turkmenistan 2005-07) ComicsLit, $10.95 95 pages November 2009 At the Table of Want (A Novel) by Larry Kimport (Malaysia 1980-82) Foremost Press, $16.95 338 pages October 2009

The reviewer, Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65) is a writer and magazine editor of ECS Nepal, and has published both in the United States and abroad, including non-fiction several books. Here Don reviews James Ciullo’s (Venezuela 1969-71) novel, Maracaibo, that mixes Washington D.C. and international politics with Columbian mercenary intrigue and Venezuelan oil. • Maracaibo by James Ciullo (Venezuela 1969–71) Mainly Murder Press September 2009 312 pages $15.95 Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt, (Nepal 1963-65) If you like fast-paced mystery novels filled with political intrigue in esoteric international settings, with an ex-Peace Corps volunteer character who has gone on (years later) to become a respected US Senator who becomes unwittingly mixed up with assassination and mayhem…, then this is a book for you. At first I thought it was a bit over the top. Could any of this happen? I asked myself. The characters in this novel are too wild (and one . . .

Monica Mills (PC/W Staff 1995–01) was the Associate Director at the Peace Corps overseeing recruitment; she also ran the Recruiting Office for the Mid-Atlantic region from 1995 to 1999. At Bread for the World since 2006, Monica has led major efforts on reform of the farm bill and the way the U.S. delivers foreign assistance. Here she reviews another PC/W staff member Hal Fleming’s novel The Brides’ Fair. • The Brides’ Fair by Hal Fleming (PC/W Staff 1966-68) PublishAmerica May 2008 212 pages $24.95 Reviewed by Monica Mills (PC/W Staff 1995–01) A strong sense of foreboding permeates the book The Brides’ Fair by Hal Fleming. A wonderful premise, Fleming chooses a local, annual event where women are chosen as brides in the Mid-Atlas Mountains for his story.  Disparate characters come together at the fair from Americans around the U.S. embassy, to women from a tribal village, to Arab police officers-even . . .

Rajiv Joseph (Senegal 1996-98) the playwright of Animals Out of Paper, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and Gruesome Playground Injuries, has won the 2009 Whiting Writers’ Award in the playwriting category. He joins Mike Meyer (China 1995–97) another recipient of the award. A total of ten awards were given this year and RPCVs won two of them. The awards, which are $50,000 each, totaling $500,000, have been given annually since 1985 to writers “of exceptional talent and promise in early career.” Rajiv is the author of Animals Out of Paper, produced by the Second Stage Theatre and published by Dramatists Play Service; Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, produced at the Center Theatre Group’s Kirk Douglas Theater in Los Angeles and named Outstanding New American Play by the National Endowment for the Arts; and Gruesome Playground Injuries, currently playing at the Alley Theatre in Houston. He has received a . . .

Joe & Azat by Jesse Lonergan (Turkmenistan 2005-07) is a graphic novel coming out next month. It is based loosely on Lonergan’s Peace Corps experience in the former Soviet Republic. This graphic novel is about an “American Joe” who finds in Turkmenistan a good friend, Azat, who is a Turkman dreamer. The novel is full of desert cab rides, vodka shots, secret girlfriends, and Turkman’s business schemes. Reviewers write that “Lonergan captures not only the bizarreness of living in a country where the president for life launches copies of his poetry books into space, outlaws gold teeth and renames the months and days, but also reveals that there is hope in seemingly hopeless situations.” Lonergan is the writer and artist of the novel and creates an “eternally optimistic and enthusiastic Turkmen who has an idealized view of America, plus grandiose dreams of business success and romantic love.” Sound familiar? Azat is a great character. . . .

RPCV Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) and author of The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed, published by Walker & Company in 2008 has been named a recipient of a 2009 Whiting Writers’  Award, one of ten given this year. The award, worth $50,000, is given annually to ” writers of exceptional talent and promise.”  Mike, who will receive the award this evening, is leaving shortly for China to work on his next book. Whiting Writers’ Awards candidates are proposed by anonymous nominators from across the country. And the winners are chosen by a small anonymous selection committee of recognized writers, literary scholars, and editors, appointed annually by the Foundation.  The Foundation accepts nominations only from the designated nominators. This year’s winners include several who have just published or will soon publish a first book. Although some were born in such far-flung places . . .

While the Peace Corps writers from Africa have produced many memoirs from their experiences overseas, RPCV writers from Latin America are sadly far behind.  Nevertheless, some great memoirs were written by Latin American Vols. While I have to eliminate Green Fires: Assault on Eden, A Novel of the Ecuadorian Rain-Forest, written by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65), I would have to say there is a lot of memories of her tour are in this novel.  Another very fine book, and a memoir, and one of the very first books on the Peace Corps by PCVs, was The Barrios of Manta: A Personal Account of the Peace Corps in Ecuador published in 1965 and written by Rhoda & Earle Brooke (Ecuador 1962-64). Early PCV, Paul Cowen (Ecuador 1966-67), did write his memoir The Making Of An Un-American: A Dialogue with Experience. It was published in 1970. There is some claim to being a Peace Corps Memoir in Craig . . .

Emily Arsenault (South Africa 2004-06) first novel received a short but glowing review in the New York Times Book Review section on Sunday, November 18. In the Crime column, Marilyn Stasio writes “In her author’s bio we learn that Emily Arsenault wrote this first novel to pass the long, quiet nights in the South African village where she worked as a Peace Corps volunteer. The comfort she took from words–funny words, strange words, words that should have been strangled at birth–is palpable in her oddly endearing coming-of-age story about a recent college graduate who lands a job as an apprentice lexicographer and discovers clues to an unsolved murder embedded in the citation files.”

Naming the best memoir by an RPCV who served in Africa has stirred some interest. A number of first rate books have been cited, from Mike Tidwell (Zaire 1985-87)  The Ponds of Kalambayi: An African Sojourn published in 1991, to Kris Holloway’s Monique and the Mango Rains that came out in 2006. What we are seeking is a memoir of the Peace Corps experience, not fiction. Readers seem not to remember a few other good books published by RPCVs. Jason Carter’s account, for example, of being a PCV in South Africa entitled Power Lines published by National Geographic Books in 2002, or  Jeanne D’Haem’s (Somalia 1968-70) charming The Last Camel: True Stories About Somalia published by Red Sea Press in 1997, or even Mango Elephants in the Sun by Susana Herrera (Cameroon 1992-94) put out by Shambhala Publications in 1999. Selecting the best book is not easy. Very few readers remember the late Tim McLaurin (Tunisia . . .