ME MADAM by Dorothy Crews Herzberg (Nigeria)

Me, Madam: Peace Corps Letters from Nigeria 1961-63
Dorothy Crews Herzberg (Nigeria 1961-63)
Arc Lights Books
February 2014
170 pages
$5.18 (Kindle); $5.18 (Paperback)

When Dorothy Crews Herzberg joined the Peace Corps in 1961, she was unaware that the program had not yet been approved by the U.S. Congress. The Corps’ proponents were hedging the strategy that having four hundred volunteers already working overseas would strengthen their case. While serving in the Peace Corps Dorothy Crews married Hershel Herzberg, and from 1961 to 1963 they wrote letters to her parents. Dorothy’s father saved and carefully preserved the fragile blue air letters. Every page of “Me, Madam” illuminates the energy of Nigeria immediately after independence. The author’s letters convey with intimacy what it was like to be there as the people struggled to create a new democracy.