Peace Corps writers

In 1964 Paul Theroux was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nyasaland (as Malawi was called before independence), living on the edge of “a crack in the earth,” as he wrote in a letter home to The Christian Science Monitor. That same year I was a PCV farther north, up in the highlands of Ethiopia, a few hours east of the Great Rift. Though our years in Africa overlapped, I didn’t know Theroux then. But I heard of him. By the time he was 23, his outspokenness had already made him notorious within the Peace Corps. In the fall of 1965, I returned to Ethiopia as an Associate Peace Corps Director (APCD), and Theroux appeared as a central character in a story that swept through Peace Corps/Africa. The Peace Corps CD in Malawi had been sent home by the U.S. Ambassador, Sam P. Gilstrap. It seems that the Malawi PCVs had . . .

He went – in the way the Peace Corps rolls the dice of our lives – to Africa as a teacher. “My schoolroom is on the Great Rift, and in this schoolroom there is a line of children, heads shaved liked prisoners, muscles showing through their rags,” he wrote home in 1964. “These children appear in the morning out of the slowly drifting hoops of fog-wisp. It is chilly, almost cold. There is no visibility at six in the morning; only a fierce white-out where earth is the patch of dirt under their bare feet, a platform, and the sky is everything else.” How many of us stood in front of similar classrooms and saw those young faces arriving with the dawn? How many of us could have written the same sentiments – though not the same sentences – home? And how many of us wanted to be the writer . . .

Sunday Morning July 2, 1961 The road home was flat. Miss Mary drove. The old hunter, watching The distant hills, Small breasts against the plains, Thought of Kenya, the rugged Mountains, where death was Close as brush, Gentler than the Slow defacing of flesh.   Fragile as the light birds he Picked from the sky Decades and miles away, He no longer heard the call. He wrote of sin as no small town Methodist ever had, Carving his prose with a new King of tool; Honed in the woods of Michigan, Sharpened by a fascist war, And tempered for an old man of Cuba. Pencils now were hollow in his hands, The juice that flowed so ready Had yellowed in his veins. He was what Gertrude had proclaimed.   Sunday he woke to our tragedy, Sought in the library of his exile His own Kilimanjaro. Feeling in sick hands the . . .

Bread, Salt, & Plum Brandy: A True Story of Love and Adventure in a Foreign Land by Lisa Fisher Cazacu (Romania 2002–04) San Diego, CA: Aventine Books April 2009 224 pages $14.95 Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt (Nepal 1963-65). There’s something unsettling about one RPCV reading another Peace Corps Volunteer’s memoirs. It inevitably conjures up comparisons and, as often, both sharply similar and contrasting emotions. Never mind that our stories are two continents, four decades, and a gender apart (Romania vs. Nepal, the 2000s vs. the 1960s, and she vs. me), Lisa Fisher Cazacu’s memoir of her PC experience is both remarkably alike and uniquely different from my own. Our mutual experiences range from initial doubts about joining the Peace Corps, to serious culture shock upon arrival in country (and ‘reverse’ culture shock on return home to the states), to difficulties learning the language and various social do’s-&-don’ts, to a host . . .

The Mind Dancing, poems by Tony Zurlo (Nigeria 1962-64) with Art and Chinese calligraphy by Vivian Lu was published in 2009 by Plain View Press, Austin, Texas, (80 pages, $14.95) This collection of poems is reviewed here by John Givens (Korea 1967-69)  A problem faces the poet who wishes to write about a culture not his own: how fully should you occupy its experiences and expectations? You can accept the advantages and limitations of being an outsider and describe what you observe objectively; or you can attempt to mimic the stance of an insider in order to generate a “truer” sense of what it feels like to be there. When the culture in question is China’s, with its ancient and well-known poetic forms and traditions, the task becomes like that faced by a translator: phrases characteristic of one language won’t have equivalencies in another. You can try for a literal word-for-word  . . .

The other day The Boston Globe published an op-ed by one of my favorite RPCV writers, Roland Merullo (Micronesia 1979-80), about one of my favorite non-RPCV writers, Ernest Hemingway, and one of my favorite towns, Key West. The op-ed was a must read for me but I couldn’t get it off the net, but then today it arrived in the mail, sent by a dear friend at Harvard. It came a day after Ernie’s 110 birthday, if anyone is still counting. Well, I am. Happy Birthday, Ernie! Roland Merullo had gone to Key West for the first time in his life. (God, this guy can go to Micronesia twenty plus years ago and it takes him this long to get around to Key West!) Anyway… Roland and his family visits Whithead Avenue and Ernie’s and Paulne’s (Pfeiffer) big rambling house that was a tourist site even when Hemingway lived in Florida. Now, with Ernie long . . .

Four Corners: The Vineyards and Wineries of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado by Starley Talbott (South Afirca 2001) Plainstar Press March 2009 182 pages $24.95 Reviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77 ) Starley Talbott’s new book Four Corners: The Vineyards and Wineries of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado is a prize for wine lovers and travelers. If you have ever considered a road trip around the Southwest, this is the book to take. After a fascinating introductory history about wine making in the Four Corners region, the author methodically studies thirty-five local wineries, offers beautiful color photographs, local history and valuable interviews. Using Talbott’s guide, one will not only know where wineries (and tasting rooms) are but will already know the proprietor’s names and stories. Armed with that knowledge, a traveler can expect better conversation and maybe a kind gesture. Good listeners (and readers) are always treated . . .

Hippie Chick by Joseph Monninger ((Upper Volta [now Burkina Faso] 1975-77) and published by FRONT STREET Press in Asheville, North Carolina is reviewed by W Tucker Clark PCV (Nepal 1967-70) When John Coyne said I have a former PCV’s book called Hippie Chick to review, I had visions of having an insight into my 1960’s former life. When it came–as a nice short 156 pages novel–I immediately started reading this tale of Lolly, a 15 year old ‘hippie daughter of a hippie woman,” who loves to sail her Boston Whaler solo in the Florida Keys. On one of these full moon later afternoons, Lolly hits an underwater obstacle and her boat is impaled and the mast breaks. She is knocked unconscious, and like the spat of movies about being shipwrecked, she is alone in the ocean, desperate and afraid of circling sharks. Hippie Chick reads like a true-life survival account, except Lolly has typical . . .

A few weeks ago, Phil Damon (Ethiopia 1963–65) wrote a review of Let Them Eat Junk: How Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity by Robert Albritton (Ethiopia 1963–65) for Peace Corps Worldwide. Phil was nice enough to contact Robert again to interview him. Special thanks to both Robert and Phil, two RPCVs who are still doing their best. • Phil Damon: Well, Rob, since this interview is for PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org, maybe we should get this question taken care of right away: how did your Peace Corps experience shape your sensibility in directions that shaped your career and ultimately this admirable book? Robert Albritton: First I want to thank you for writing such a thoughtful review of my book, and for formulating the questions of this interview. There were three formative experiences that had particularly strong influences on my thinking as a young man. First, I studied at UC Berkeley and lived in the International . . .

Still ‘Ugly’ After All These Years By MICHAEL MEYER In the annals of misunderstood titles, a special place belongs to William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick’s novel “The Ugly American.” Today, the phrase is shorthand for our compatriots who wear tube tops to the Vatican or shout for Big Macs in Beijing. But as summer vacation season begins (at least for those who can still afford it), it’s worth recalling that the impolitic travelers in “The Ugly American” aren’t drunken backpackers or seniors sporting black socks, but the so-called educated elite of the diplomatic corps, whose insensitivity to local language and customs prompts observations like this: “The simple fact is, Mr. Ambassador, that average Americans, in their natural state, if you will excuse the phrase, are the best ambassadors a country can have,” a Filipino minister tells an American official. “They are not suspicious, they are eager to share their . . .

Publisher Marian Haley Beil (Ethiopia 1962–64) and I are pleased to announce the winners of the 2009 Peace Corps Writers Awards for books published during 2008. We have added two new awards to the six we have given in the past — one for Best Peace Corps Memoir, and one for Best Book of Photography. The winning books and authors are: Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award The Last Days of Old Beijing Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed By Michael Meyer (China 1995-97) Walker & Company Maria Thomas Fiction Award The Baker’s Boy By Barry Kitterman (Belize 1975–77) Southern Methodist University Press Award for Best Travel Writing Travel Wise How to Be Safe, Savvy and Secure Abroad By Ray Leki (Nepal 1979-80; Staff: 1988–90; Pakistan 1990) Intercultural Press Award for Best Poetry Book The Book of Sleep By Eleanor Stanford (Cape Verde 1998–2000) Carnegie Mellon Press Award for . . .

In the Sunday’s Book Section  of The New York Times there is an essay on the book that ‘launched’ the Peace Corps: The Ugly American. This novel, written by William Lederer and Eugen Burdick in the late Fifties, stirred Kennedy and others in JFK’s administration into new international action. This essay in the NYTIMES on this infamous book is written by one of the China Gang of PCV writers, Michael Meyer (China 1995-97), author of The Last Days of Old Beijing. In his essay, Meyer writes, “The Peace Corps is not a panacea, but when it comes to projecting America’s values abroad, its spirit comes closest to what the fictional Homer Atkins advocated decades before that global symbol of a different kind of ugly Americanism, Homer Simpson, told his children: “You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

To order any of these books click on their title or cover. Mosquito Conversations: More Stories from the Upper Peninsula by Lauri Anderson (Nigeria 1965–67) North Star Press of St. Cloud, June 2009 $14.95 Tunakumbuka (We Remember): Our Time in Tanzania as Peace Corps Volunteers by Harlan Bengtson (Tanzania 1965–67) PublishAmerica, March 2009 64 pages $16.95 Bread, Salt & Plum Brandy: A True Story of Love and Adventure in a Foreign Land by Lisa Fisher Cazacu (Romania 2002–04) and Rosemary Colgrove Aventine Press April 2009 224 pages $14.95 On My Own Now: Straight Talk from the Proverbs for Young Christian Women who Want to Remain Pure, Debt-free and Regret-free by Donna Lee Schillinger (Ecuador 1989-91) Quilldriver April Fool’s Day 2009 288 pages $14.95, audio book $9.95, e-book $4.95