Peace Corps writers

I am very impressed that so many ( actually only two) RPCVs had anything to say about the “Great  Peace Corps novel” so let’s see what we can generate regarding ‘other’ books about the Peace Corps Experience: Peace Corps Memoirs.  God knows we have more than a few academic and commercial books, as well as, self published books of what the Peace Corps was like going back to the first days of the agency.  The very first Peace Corps memoir (written by an RPCV) is Arnold Zeitlin’s To the Peace Corps with Love published by Doubleday in 1965. Zeitlin was a PCV with the first group of Volunteers to Ghana, in 1961. Zeitlin had been a young reporter before going into the Peace Corps, and after his tour he was a journalist all his life, living around the world until his recent retirement. Another journalist, after his Peace Corps years, is Leonard Levitt. He wrote a terrific book, An African . . .

Will Siegel is a technical writer who also writes fiction and who also served in Ethiopia with Marian Haley Beil and myself back in the day (1962–64). Will went to San Francisco State for his masters degree in creative writing and lived there during the summer of love (and lots more) before moving to New York City, and next to Boston where he has lived for the last twenty plus years. Then and now, he is a fine writer and one of the sweetest guys we know and here he reviews Larry Wonderling’s (PC Staff: COR Puerto Rico 1968–70; Afghanistan 1970-73; early ’80s Central and Latin America; late ’80s Africa) book on a tender and tough spot in San Francisco. San Francisco Tenderloin: True Stories of Heroes, Demons, Angels, Outcasts & a Psychotherapist Expanded Second Edition By Larry Wonderling, Ph.D. Cape Foundation Publications 415 Pages $24.95 Reviewed by William Siegel (Ethiopia 1962-64) Larry . . .

In the first days and years of the Peace Corps there were many books written by people who had never been PCVs, never worked for the agency, never worked overseas, and never volunteer for anything, but were academics or free lance writers who saw a great new subject areas that they could write about, especially since no one knew anything about who, what, where, when and how the Peace Corps might develop or what would happen to all those bright young people joining up and going off to live in the middle of nowhere.  A small cottage industry of ‘Peace Corps books’ began in the publishing world at a time when there were no Volunteers. Over the years I have haunted yard sales and bookstores and now the Internet  and have collected enough of those books to cause my wife to roll her eyes whenever I come home clutching another history or anthropological study of the first Peace Corps years. The best books, of . . .

Jack Allison served a 3-year tour with the Peace Corps in Malawi where he was a public health Volunteer in the bush. Here he reviews Thomas Howell’s book Allah’s Gardenon Morocco based on Hollowell’s brief tour as a PCV, and now his extended connection with the country. • Allah’s Garden by Thomas Hollowell (Morocco 2002) Tales Press March 2009 198  pages $14.95 Reviewed by Jack Allison (Malawi 1967–69) Thomas Hollowell’s novel is actually a multi-layered reportage of his fascination with Morocco which resulted in a very brief stint as a Volunteer with the US Peace Corps there in 2002, including an historical denouement of the war in the Western Sahara, and a focused account of the capture, torture, and epic struggle of a Moroccan physician, Azeddine Benmansour, who spent 24 years as a prisoner of the terrorist group, the Polisario.  Azeddine is one of the longest-held POWs ever. The novel . . .

Award winning writer and Guatemala RPCV Mark Brazaitis reviews In an Uncharted Country by Korea RPCV Clifford Garstang, published this September by Press 53. • In an Uncharted Country by Clifford Garstang (South Korea 1976–78) Press 53 August 2009 204 pages $14.00 Reviewed by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991–93) If Clifford Garstang’s stories were a city, they wouldn’t be a place you would have heard much about. But if you happened to settle there, you wouldn’t want to leave. In “White Swans,” one of the stories in his excellent debut collection, Garstang tackles the same subject matter that National Book Award-finalist Mary Gaitskill does in the title story to her third collection, Don’t Cry. In Gaitskill’s story, a woman, recently widowed, is helping a friend adopt a child from Ethiopia; in Garstang’s, a married couple is in China to adopt a daughter. In both stories, bureaucracy is only part of what . . .

I’m going to try and settle an argument–and create one!–by looking at the shelf of books we have from Peace Corps writers and come up with a list of the ‘best Peace Corps novels.’ I hope with my nomination to engage the community and have you all respond with your “best books.”  Later we’ll look at the non-fiction accounts by RPCVs and pick a list of those books. First, why list of  ‘great books’? Well, I guess it all started with John W. De Forest who introduced the notion of “the great American novel” in 1868 in Nation magazine. Novelist De Forest made the point that no American had produced a true painting of the American soul. What De Forest wanted was a book that “produced a true painting of the American soul, a picture of the ordinary emotions and manner of American existence.” So, what Peace Corps novel has “produced a true painting of . . .

We have a new novelist on our Peace Corps bookshelf, Emily Arsenault of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Emily and her husband were PCVs in rural South Africa where she wrote the first draft of The Broken Teaglass. Emily writes: “After school, I spent many afternoons and evenings sitting outside reading, watching goats, and handing out biscuits and apple slices to the little kids who liked to come by and giggle at our poor Setswana skills. And scribbling out the first draft.” Her mystery novel, published this September by Delacorte Press involves a mysterious quotation in a dictionary (Emily once worked for Merriam-Webster). In their review PW wrote, “”Arsenault’s quirky, arresting debut … [is] an absorbing, offbeat mystery-meets-coming-of-age novel that’s as sweet as it is suspenseful.” I’m a great believer in ‘novels of information’ and on Emily’s website she writes about the factual information she was able to use in creating her novel, . . .

Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) has published his share of PODs  (print-on-demand) books over the  years (and has a garage full of books to prove it!), and he was kind enough to send in this short piece about his path-to-publication. This is good advice for anyone looking to publish their Peace Corps (or other) stories. By the way, Larry has a new book coming out from iUniverse so all family and friends of Lihosit should be on the alert. However, if you don’t get the book in the mail, don’t worry. We’ll be reviewing it on this website. Here’s what Larry writes about self-publishing. Ninety percent of all Peace Corps memoirs are self-published. Most companies report authors’ average sales at one hundred copies or less, usually to friends and family. Heck, my friends and family have been begging me to quit writing for nearly thirty years. I can’t stop. Maybe you can’t . . .

RPCV Thomas Hollowell, who served briefly in Morocco, is one of 20 authors being featured at a small book store in Peoria called I Know You Like A Book this coming Saturday, October 10. According to the owner of the story, quoted in The Peoria Star, “With the Internet changing the way books are published and marketed, more people are taking advantage of opportunities to publish their own works.” She goes onto say, “It’s also getting harder for writers to get noticed.” Well, it has always been harder for writers to get noticed even if their books are published by commercial or academic presses, or from a small regional press. Tom Hollowell’s book Allah’s Garden was published by a small press in Illinois this summer and he put it this way in the newspaper article, “While self-publishing can be an opportunity, it also has its drawbacks. Traditional publishing routes are flawed . . .

Buffaloes by My Bedroom: Tales of Tanganyika By Dennis Herlocker (Tanzania 1964-66) iUniverse, $18.95 206 pages September 2009   Maracaibo By Jim Ciullo (Venezuela 1969-71) Mainly Murder Press, $!5.95 304 pages October 2009 In an Uncharted Country By Clifford Garstang (Korea 1976-78) Press 53, $14.00 186 pages September 2009 Tanga By Eric Madeen (Gabon iUniverse 288 pages April 2009 What The Abenaki Say About Dogs …and other poems and stories of Lake Champlain By Dan Close (Ethiopia 1966-68) The Tamarac Press, $10 53 pages 2009 Footsteps (Novel) Kirsten Johnson (Kenya 1982-84) Plain View Press, $18.95 243 pages 2009 Clintonomics: How Bill Clinton Reengineered the Reagan Revolution By Jack Godwin (Gabon 1982-84) AMACOM Press, $27.95 304 pages March 2009 Images of America; Platte County By Starley Talbott (South Africa 2001) Arcadia Publishing, $21.99 128 pages 2009 The Last of His Mind: A Year in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s by John Thorndike . . .

Merrill D. Peterson (Armenia 1997-99)  Professor of History (Emeritus) at the University of Virginia and the editor of the prestigious Library of America edition of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, and who wrote several books on Jefferson, including the acclaimed 1970s biography Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation died on September 23, 2009. He was 88. In his lifetime he wrote 37 books, including one based on his Peace Corps tour, Starving Armenians: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After.” Peterson joined the Peace Corps at the age of 76. In addition to his contributions to the University through teaching and chairing the history department, Peterson also served as the College’s dean of faculty for four years. In an article in the University’s Cavalier Daily, History Prof. Charles McCurdy said Peterson was an “intellectual historian,” but also praised his humility.”[He was] the greatest historian on the Virginia faculty in . . .

Portrait of a Peace Corps Gringo by Paul Arfin, self-published with BookSurge in August, is reviewed here by Honduras RPCV Barbara E. Joe, author of Triumph & Hope: Golden Years with the Peace Corps in Honduras, selected as Best Peace Corps Memoir of 2008 by Peace Corps Writers and Best New Non-Fiction Finalist, National Indie Excellence Awards. Barbara works as a Spanish interpreter, translator, and freelance writer in Washington, DC. • Portrait of a Peace Corps Gringo by Paul Arfin (Colombia 1963–65) BookSurge August 2009 378 pages $17.99 Reviewed by Barbara Joe (Honduras 2000–03) In Portrait of a Peace Corps Gringo by Paul Arfin, I looked forward to becoming reacquainted with Colombia, where I’d spent two teenage years. This book, however, turned out to be more autobiography than Peace Corps memoir. Peace Corps service is often valuable in shaping young people’s future. For Arfin, this pattern held true. While the author . . .

John Woods is president of CWL Publishing Enterprises. He has worked in book publishing since 1970 and recently worked on Making the Good Life Last: 4 Keys to Sustainable Living by Michael A. Schuler (Berrett-Koehler). He was a Volunteer in Ethiopia from 1965 to 1968. His son Christopher Woods was a PCV in Kazakhstan from 1996 to 1998. Here John reviews Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America by David A. Taylor. • Soul of a People: The WPA Writers’ Project Uncovers Depression America by David A. Taylor (Mauritania 1983–85) Wiley February 2009 272 pages $27.95 Reviewed by John Woods (Ethiopia 1965–68) Imagine in this current economic travail if one of President Obama’s initiatives was to fund a project where out-of-work writers were employed to create travel and cultural guides to every state and several major cities in the United States. I’m pretty sure the right . . .

Glimpse is seeking applicants for its Spring 2010 Correspondents Program. Supported in part by National Geographic Society, The Correspondents Program is for especially talented young adults (aged 18–34) specializing in writing or photography. Correspondents receive a $600 stipend, a professional editor, career training in writing and photography, guaranteed publication on Glimpse.org, and potential publication in National Geographic platforms. The application deadline is November 1. For more information, visit: http://glimpse.org/correspondents.

Images of America — Platte County is reviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit, whose latest book, Whispering Campaign, includes short stories from Mexico and Central America. Published by iUniverse, it will be available at Amazon.com by November 1st. • Images of America: Platte County by Starley Talbott (South Africa 2001) Arcadia Publishing August 2009 128 pages $21.99 Reviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras, 1975–77) Images in America: Platte County is a history book. It could be described as a photo essay but it is more than that. This is about the people, places and activities from the 1800s until 1965 that defined Platte County, Wyoming. The history of its changing cultural geography begins with homesteaders riding a trail parallel to the North Platte River in the later portion of the 19th century and ends with abandoned Atlas missile silos south of Chugwater in the 1960s. The black and white photographs are . . .