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História, História: Two years in the Cape Verde Islands By Eleanor Stanford (Cape Verde 1998-2000) CCLaP Hypermodern Editions March  2013 128 Pages http://www.cclapcenter.com/historia Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) There are as many different Peace Corps memoirs as there are returned volunteers who choose to write them, each unique to the author and his or her experience, each generously sharing a hard won world view with the reader.  We all have our favorites, mine are Mike Tidwell’s The Ponds of Kalambayi, Geraldine Kennedy’s Harmattan, Kristin Holloway’s Monique and the Mango Rains, Peter Hessler’s River Town, and Moritz Thomsen’s masterwork, Living Poor.  These are the books I recommend to other writers, book groups, travelers, and friends who just want a good, original read.  I will now add Eleanor Stanford’s História, História to the list.  In fact, as I read her book for review, I found myself already telling anyone who would . . .

Song of San Francisco (poems) Ed Mycue (Ghana 1961–63) Spectacular Diseases Press $10 18 pages 2012 Reviewed by Darcy Meijer (Gabon 1982-84) I was happy to get a short book to review from John, but this chapbook of ten poems by Ed Mycue takes a lot of re-reading. When I first read the poems to my husband, he said, “Sure, I get them.” I challenged him to explain, and he said he couldn’t put it into words. I talked to Mycue about this, and he quoted Robert Frost: “What is lost in the translation is the poetry.” He also responded warmly to my specific questions about the poems and told me about his family and ideas about life. One small problem is that Mycue writes prose just as he writes poetry. So where does this leave me as a reviewer? I’ll try. First, let me say that I understood three . . .

[San Francisco has produced many fine poets over the years. I, for one, grew up reading the Beats: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, Neal Cassady, Anne Waldman and Michael McClure. The list goes on and on. They were the poets of the ’50s and early ’60s, and then in 1970 Edward Mycue came to town. Edward Mycue (Ghana 1961-63) had ETed from the Peace Corps because of family needs at home and he returned to the U.S. to work for HEW in Dallas before arriving in San Francisco on June 1, 1970. He joined the new Gay Liberation Movement, began to work for Margrit Roma and Clarence Ricklets’ The New Shakespeare Company, and started publishing his poems. Since 1970 his poetry, criticism, essays and stories have appeared in over 2000 journals, magazines, on the Internet and everywhere literature is read. He is called by many, “one of the best living poets in . . .

2011 Winner of the Poetry Award–Jeff Fearnside (Kazakhstan 2002-04) author of Lake, and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land. Winners  of the Peace Corps Writers Awards receive a certificate and small cash award. Jeff Fearnside taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kazakhstan from 2002 to 2004. After completing his service, he remained in Central Asia for another two years, marrying his Kazakhstani bride Valentina. Their courtship and his experiences in general while living overseas were explored in his chapbook Lake, and Other Poems of Love in a Foreign Land. Most of his work since Peace Corps has involved education in some way, from managing the Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to teaching at Western Kentucky University and Prescott College. As a Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at WKU, he was nominated for a Faculty Award for Teaching, one of that institution’s highest . . .

Valley Views II — Four Plays Charles G. Blewitt (Grenada 1969-71) Uncle Wilson’s Productions 156 pages Paperback $15 2009 Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) READING MORE LIKE SHORT STORIES, the four very brief plays in Charles G. Blewitt’s Valley Views II, all take place in the ‘Great Pocono Northeast’ of Northeastern Pennsylvania, which the author describes in his introduction as being populated by, “…first, second, or third generation descendants of ancestors who had literally been dropped off a bus or a train because they either had relatives living locally or they just didn’t have the fare to go farther.” That said, the people in these plays are familiar to any of us who live in smaller urban areas where socio economic groups and races live uncomfortably side by side. Using the framework of counseling in two of the plays, Blewitt mines those divides for his earnest . . .

Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 Charles Murray (Thailand 1965–67) Crown Forum 407 pages $27.00 (hardback) 2012 Reviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) WHILE READING CHARLES MURRAY’S NEW BOOK, I thought about our recent national obsession with civil discourse and events in Oakland, California. Since it never snows in Oakland, Occupy Wall Street has been very visible there. It would have been most illustrative to seat Mr. Murray at a cloth covered table, set on a high platform overlooking the street below. A finely dressed and polite moderator could have introduced him while the author poured himself a glass of water from an imported bottle. “Charles Murray is an American libertarian, author and PhD invited here to explain that you do not have jobs because you are fat, lazy and dishonest sons and daughters of bitches.” Murray cloaks these terms in ten dollar words and phrases but . . .

Pages 31-33: There followed a briefing by the Peace Corps Field Assessment Officer, a psychiatrist. Now in sections, we met in a reverberatingly hot classroom of Teachers College. The psychiatrist was a ruffle-haired, soft-cheeked young guy, trying to – suck! suck! – get his pipe lit. Off to one side, half sitting against the desk, was presumable a colleague, a haggard-looking creature with a large balding dome of a head and jutting elbows. The spitting image of Raskolnikov. “We’re meeting today,” said the psychiatrist, “to tell you what to expect in the way of selection procedures. It would be disingenuous of us to pretend that you won’t be observed and assessed throughout training. Most of you will be judged acceptable and sent to Nigeria, but a small percentage will be disqualified. Why disqualified? I will come to that. It shouldn’t surprise you that we want emotionally mature, competent individuals who . . .

Page 2: These were momentous times, Pope John died and the only clergyman with the guts to stare a television camera in the face was the old croaker himself, Cardinal Cushing, who eulogized from the heart. Gordon Cooper was lofted into orbit, as I watched with my heart thumping against my ribs, but the public taste for that kind of thing had become so staled that nobody else give a flicker of a damn. The Governor of Alabama stood like a minstrel dandy in the schoolhouse door, while Katzenbach, with immeasurable dignity, supplicated before him. Kennedy took Europe by storm and I felt a twinge of egret that I wasn’t still in Paris to witness it. In Berlin he delivered his most rousing speech, declaring with hoarse passion, “Lass sie nach Berlin kommen!” – and in turning away as the newsreels clearly showed, slipped himself a small smile for the . . .

Footprints in the Mud: A Peace Corps Volunteer’s 40+ Years of Ties to Thailand by Michael R. MacLeod (Thailand 1964–68) Third Place Press 296 pages $16.95 (to purchase contact: mikermacleod@comcast.net 2011 Reviewed by Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975–77) THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BRIDGE between the original Peace Corps and a changing institution. Today, as the Peace Corps reevaluates itself, it is also a guiding handrail while crossing the fast moving river of doubt. The author served in Thailand from 1964 until 1968, entering months after JFK’s death and leaving months after the deaths of MLK and RFK. This was not just a tumultuous time at home with hundreds of cities in flames each summer, it was also a time of war abroad — very near MacLeod’s stilted wooden home in a far-off village. Originally, Peace Corps Volunteers were trained in the U.S. and shipped abroad to serve, much like the . . .