Search Results For -Eres Tu

Robert Albritton (Ethiopia 1963-65) teaches at a university in Canada and has a book coming out this month that might interest you. It is entitled, Let Them Eat Junk: How Capitalism Creates Hunger and Obesity. From the book jacket, “Capitalism may promise cheap, nutritious food for all, but it has failed to deliver on that promise.” The book explores the economics of our food system, and it explains why a quarter of the world’s population go hungry despite the fact that enough food is produced worldwide to feed us all. Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, says about the book, “Marx understood the dynamics of the current food crisis over a century ago. Robert Albritton has written a fine primer, bridging the best thinking of the nineteenth century to the urgent needs of the twenty-first.” And Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, author . . .

In August of 2008 Darcy Munson Meijer (Gabon 1982-84) moved to Abu Dhabi with her husband and two of her children, boys ages 7 and 8, to begin  a three-year teaching contract at Zayed University, an all-female institution. She went to work in the Academic Bridge Program that prepares the women to do university coursework full-time in English. Darcy explains the reason for this essay . . . It started at the annual party hosted by one of my fellow Gabon RPCVs in St. Croix last summer — this desire to set people straight about life in Abu Dhabi. While my friends were sharing stories and gossip in the corps de garde, conversation turned to the birqa that I would surely have to wear in the United Arab Emirates, where we to move shortly. You may already know that the surest way to get an American’s knickers in a wad is . . .

 The Choosing America Project is looking for true short stories that express the “very essence of being an immigrant in America.” They are looking for “gripping human interest stories that will  reflect the diversity of the American immigrant experience, past and  present.” Do you have a story to tell? Go to  www.choosingamerica.com . If you don’t have a story, then pass this request onto someone you know. They are trying to disseminate this information to as many immigrants as possible in search of the best material. Forward this to other writers, editors, students,  professors, educators, seniors, colleagues and friends, community  leaders and organizers as well as to community groups and  organizations, anyone you believe who can contribute to this  project. Many thanks.

Ellen R. Sheeley was an early business PCV in Western Samoa from 1983 to 1985. Finishing her tour, she traveled home very slowly, circling the globe. Years later as a successful businesswoman, she happened to watch a television newscast that impassioned her. Ellen was kind enough to grant an electronic interview about her book Reclaiming Honor in Jordan: A National Public Opinion Survey On “Honor” Killings. She was interviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) a  city planner who publishes books (travel & poetry)  as a hobby. [Larry:] What is an honor killing? [Ellen:] “Honor” killing is the murder of family for actual or perceived immoral sexual behavior. It is a misguided attempt to restore family honor. Immoral behavior could be rape (in which case the rape victim is murdered), extramarital or premarital intercourse, or even flirtation. “Honor” killing is believed to have its origins in misinterpretations of pre-Islamic Arab . . .

During the 1950s, two social and political impulses swept across the United States. One impulse that characterized the decade was detailed in two best-selling books of the times, the 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and the non-fiction The Organization Man, written by William H. Whyte and published in 1956. These books looked at the “American way of life” and how men got ahead on the job and in society. Both are bleak looks at the mores of the corporate world. These books were underscored by Ayn Rand’s philosophy as articulated in such novels as Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957. Every man, philosophized Rand, was an end in himself. He must work for rational self-interest, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. Then in 1958 came a second impulse first expressed in the novel The Ugly American by William Lederer and . . .

Though Eve answered not a single one of the fourteen questions I’d posed to her, I have to admit to being remarkably impressed with her gentility. Instead of slamming the door in my face, which a haughtier person might have done, she simply refused to walk through it. The conversation remained more-or-less open, as long as it went in a different direction. Which, in fact, it did. At least for me.  I turned it on my writer friends — showed them her book, read them my interview questions, and invited the conversation that I now bring to this forum: What kind of boundaries can we/should we/may we erect around our private lives if we willingly — and for profit — make ourselves and our experiences part of the public sector? I eventually talked Eve into answering three of those original fourteen questions (full text follows), and trust that despite our . . .

Now I love hyperbole as much as the next person.  In fact, I live by the mantra that if a story is worth spinning, it’s worth spinning wildly.  However, as a world traveler, and as an RPCV, I’ve seen real hostage crises (a term not simply adopted by Eve’s publisher for promotional purposes, but one which she herself coins).  Because I have witnessed the attendant terror, brutality, and emotional havoc caused by such horrors, it riles me to hear someone claim solidarity with such suffering because she had to stay inside her home, cozied up on the sofa, watching TV a little longer than planned one evening.  “Hostage” isn’t, in my estimation, a title to wear flippantly — and certainly not for attention — (or sales — ) gathering purposes.  But I found that the line between serious and frivolous was crossed in this book very, very often. I wanted . . .

Susan Meadows Luccini (Ghana 1961–63) is a personal historian. Since her very early days in the Peace Corps, with the first group of PCVs, she has been a high school and university English teacher and writing coach, as well as a publisher.  She has worked as a writer, editor and proofreader. Besides all that, she has translated a number of books for children as well as several dealing with art, archaeology and history from Italian to English. Today she runs SML Publishing that she started in 2005. This a s perfect job for Susan as it combines her “skills,  wit, personal strengths and inclinations.” She has had a lifelong interest in people, in their stories and in the process by which memories are retained. We asked Susan to write us a short article about the importance of writing your Peace Corps story. • • • You And Your Peace Corps . . .