Peace Corps Worldwide

Mike Meyer (China 1995-97) will be talking about The Last Days of Old Beijing — May 7th 6:30 – 8:00 pm at the New York Asia Society and Museum: 725 Park Avenue, New York (Cost: $7 students and members, $10 nonmembers) Mike Meyer after his Peace Corps tour lived — as no other Westerner has — in a shared courtyard home in Beijing’s oldest neighborhood, Dazhalan, on one of its famed hutong (lanes). There he volunteered to teach English at the local grade school and immersed himself in the community, recording with affection the life stories of the Widow, who shares his courtyard; co-teacher Miss Zhu and student Little Liu; and the migrants Recycler Wang and Soldier Liu; among the many others who, despite great differences in age and profession, make up the fabric of this unique neighborhood. Their bond is rapidly being torn, however, by forced evictions as century-old houses and . . .

You might have seen the Book Section of The New York Times on Sunday, April 26, 2009. There was an essay by Tom Bissell (Uzbekistan 1996-97) on the writer David Foster Wallace. The essay was about a book coming out from Little, Brown, a transcript of the 2005 Kenyon commencement address given by Wallace. What’s interesting to me is that within the last month two of these back-of-the-magazine essays have been written by RPCVs. Mike Meyer (China  1995-97), who wrote  The Last Days of Old Beijing, had an essay on  the rise (and fall) of book advances a couple weeks back. Meyer, I know, is scheduled to publish another essay in the Book Section of the Times in the next few weeks. Perhaps we should just plot on how we might take over this pages for our own purposes.

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 . . .

The nice thing about this blog is that I get word of new RPCV writers. Here is a writer who has been under the radar of PeaceCorpsWriters: John Shannon (Malawi 1968-71). John has written nine “Jack Liffey” mysteries and four other novels, including Courage, the story of a disillusioned American Communist who goes to Africa to help foment a revolution. This novel came out of his Peace Corps experience and left him a “prohibited immigrant” in Malawi for over a decade. His 11 California mysteries are about Jack Liffey “a decent guy, as compassionate as he is brave.  His city is greater LA, his turf the forgotten suburbs, run-down neighborhoods and volatile ethnic communities. “Jack Liffey understands loss.  First he lost his job in the  aerospace industry, then he lost his wife and daughter.  All he really has left is his ability to track down missing children, and his willingness to elbow his . . .

[Ellen]: What primarily occupies your time now? [Eve]: You mean, besides nearly non-stop promotion and marketing of First Comes Love? Well, I’ve got two children I’m trying to usher safely (and without too much trauma) through middle school and high school.  I’m trying to write a second (third and fourth…) book.  I do lots of volunteer work: I’m on the Board of Directors and Development Committee of the National Priorities Project; I do fundraising for our local domestic violence agency; I serve on a crisis response team; and I volunteer one day a week and am helping to create a fundraising arm for our local food pantry.  I also do freelance proofreading and copy editing when it comes my way.  Oh and I’m an ordained minister and occasionally preside over weddings and funerals. [Ellen]: Which authors do you most admire?  Whose works served as models for you as you were . . .

[Ellen]: My experience bears out that those Americans who most successfully navigate overseas tours are those who lose their Americanized perspective quickly; the ones who normalize their new experiences and environment without making regular comparisons to what they left behind.  The writings of such people often detail a fascinating “deconstruction”-at the extreme end of the spectrum personalities can unravel as people “go native” (think eminent Peace Corps author Paul Theroux’s main character in Mosquito Coast); at the modest end of the spectrum, others (your husband John being a prime example) immediately and humbly accept a new version of normal. Your writing is notable for featuring the opposite effect:  It details your persistent U.S.-centric point of view even after substantial time abroad. For instance, even late in the book, after four years living overseas (three in Uganda, one in Ecuador) you describe hearing gunfire in the night, huddling in your hallway, 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 . . .