Search Results for “Eres Tu” – Page 66

“The Peace Corps Radicalized Me” by Thomas Pleasure (Peru)

Jun 03 2016

The following article was published on Argonaut Online — the web presence of The Argonaut, a local newspaper for the westside of Los Angeles — on June 1, 2016 under the title “Opinion Power to Speak.” We are delighted to have received permission from the author to repost it here. • • The Peace Corps Radicalized Me by Thomas Pleasure (Peru 1964–66) SINCE FRANK MANKIEWICZ’S DEATH in 2014, activists, historians, cineastes, journalists and spinmeisters had been awaiting publication of his posthumous memoir, So As I Was Saying . . . My Somewhat Eventful Life. I imagine we all felt that Frank — son of “Citizen Kane” writer Herman Mankiewicz, nephew of director Joseph Mankiewicz and a political force of the 1960s and ’70s in his own right — had a special message for us. We were right. Movie buffs will lap up Frank’s tales of growing up in Hollywood and his conversation . . .

Franklin Rothman (Brazil) publishes BROOKLYN, NY to BOCAIUVA, BRAZIL

May 25 2016

IN JUNE 1969, just three months prior to his Peace Corps project termination conference in Brazil, Frank meets a young Brazilian girl with beautiful blue eyes at a James Bond movie, and twelve days later he asks her to marry him. • Brooklyn, NY to Bocaiúva, Brazil tells the story of the unlikely chain of circumstances which led to Frank meeting Lena. The author traces these circumstances all the way back to his childhood in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he experiences the closeness of his extended Jewish family and the warmth of Puerto Ricans with whom his father came into contact. A homestay with a family in Mexico, in 1964 as part of his undergraduate major in Spanish, heightens his fascination with Latin American culture. Frank tells in a lighthearted manner of his adventures and blunders while hitching rides around Europe in the summer of 1966 . . .

Review — LEARNING TO LOVE KIMCHI by Carol MacGregor Cissel (Korea)

May 25 2016

Learning to Love Kimchi: Letters Home from a Peace Corps Volunteer Carol MacGregor Cissel (Korea 1973–75) CreateSpace May 2016 274 pages $10.99 (paperback), $4.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Clifford Garstang (Korea 1976–77) • CAROL CISSEL EMBARKED on her Peace Corps odyssey in December, 1973. “We’re in Korea!” she writes home to her mother upon arrival after a journey through Honolulu and Tokyo with her service group. This exclamation forms the opening of Cissel’s memoir, Learning to Love Kimchi. What follows are all the letters she wrote to her mother over the course of her two years working in Korea as an education Volunteer and the months spent touring Southeast Asia after the completion of her service. My own Peace Corps/Korea experience began just a few days after Cissel left the country, so I read these letters with considerable fondness and nostalgia, remembering my own first taste of kimchi, my own . . .

Review — AMERICAN SAHIB by Eddie James Girdner (India)

May 25 2016

American Sahib (novel) Eddie James Girdner (India 1968–70) CreateSpace March 2016 420 pages $14.90 (paperback) Reviewed by Tony D’Souza (Ivory Coast 2000-02, Madagascar 2002-03) • ONE OF THE GREAT liberties of the on-going tidal wave of self-publishing is that an author can go on as long as he wants. No longer do fussy editors slash and burn their way through your manuscript, no nitpicking gatekeepers naysay your style or plotting, or even the basic value of the endeavor at all. Turn the coin over, however, and the drawbacks are those same things. If engineers were allowed equal liberties, the landscape would be littered with deathtrap bridges. If ballerinas were so free, most would be falling down. In the back jacket copy to Eddie James Girdner’s overlong and plodding American Sahib, someone has lauded the book as, “The only novel ever written about the American Peace Corps experience in rural . . .

Review — THE PEACE CORPS, SIERRA LEONE, AND ME by Norman Tyler (Sierra Leone)

May 24 2016

The Peace Corps, Sierra Leone, and Me Norman Tyler (Sierra Leone 1964–66) CreateSpace August 2015 191 pages $12.50 (paperback), $3.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971–73) • THIS MEMOIR IS ABOUT THE JOURNEY of a naïve 19-year-old who joins the Peace Corps and heads “up-country” to Kenema, Sierra Leone, on the Liberian border, from 1964 to 1966. His trek was about seven years before my PCV experience in Guatemala, after which I eventually arrived in Sierra Leone with my family as the director of an international child care agency. My experience there allowed me to commiserate with much of Norman’s story. Upon my arrival in Sierra Leone, I remember thinking, “And I thought I knew what poverty was — and diseases — lassa fever and green monkey disease — yikes!” (I don’t remember Ebola being mentioned, but you get the picture). I’ve always admired the PCVs who served and were able to survive . . .

Review — THE GIRL IN THE GLYPHS by David C. Edmonds (Chile)

May 23 2016

The Girl in the Glyphs by David C. Edmonds (Chile 1963–65)) and Maria Nieves Edmonds Peace Corps Writers January 2016 354 pages $12.99 (paperback), $4.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Andy Martin (Ethiopia 1965–68) • The Girl in the Glyphs was a surprisingly enjoyable book. I say surprisingly because I chose to review the book from a list of available titles, each of which had a short paragraph synopsis. I believe the synopsis for this book said it was a romantic adventure story. John Coyne, who saw a proof copy of the book said it was “a splendid tale of love and intrigue in a dangerous country . . ..” When the book arrived in the mail, I didn’t know what to think. I was definitely trying to judge it by its cover and that was a bit unfair. It’s 6″ x 9″ with cover art that harkens to Indiana Jones. The inside has one illustration, a map, and . . .

“Impressions of Cuba” by Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Peru)

May 21 2016

• Impressions of Cuba A Thirty-Year Retrospective by Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Peru 1962-64) • Why Cuba? The year before my mother married my dad, she and her cousin Celia took a Greyhound bus from Milwaukee to Miami. After sight-seeing in Miami, they took an amphibian plane to Havana where they ran into some wealthy American men (playboys) who showed them the sights, including the newly opened Tropicana night club that still entertains visitors with scantily clad women dancing to fiery salsa. I don’t know why my mother, a first-generation daughter of a Bavarian-born pastry chef, chose Cuba. Her affinity toward Latin America developed after that trip even though she returned only once, after she had talked my dad into a family road trip from Milwaukee to Mexico City and Acapulco in 1956. It was my mother who encouraged me to say yes to a 1962 telegram from Sargent Shriver inviting me . . .

PC Writers MFA Program: Now Open for RPCVs and PCVs

May 19 2016

Are you inspired by your Peace Corps service? Do you have an affinity for writing? Looking to write a memoir or book about your Peace Corps experience? John Coyne (RPCV Ethiopia 1962-64), editor of Peace Corps Worldwide, has arranged with National University in California to offer an online MFA program in non-fiction, fiction and poetry writing for PCV and RPCV writers. Courses are currently under development and will be taught by published Peace Corps authors and National University faculty members. Coyne will teach the introductory class and serve as an adviser to Peace Corps students. The inaugural program is slated to begin in Fall 2016 – will be accepting a class of 15 exceptional students. The MFA is flexible program. Students can complete the degree in between one to two years, taking a single one or two-month class at a time. As the course is online, students have the opportunity to progress at their own pace. This also allows . . .

Review — BLOOD UPON THE SNOW by Martin Ganzglass (Somalia)

May 15 2016

Blood Upon The Snow (A Novel of the American Revolution) Martin R. Ganzglass (Somalia 1966–68) A Peace Corps Writers Book March, 2016 344 pages $14.95 (paperback), $3.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Thomas E. Coyne • Martin . . . Martin . . . Martin, we need maps and illustrations. Your descriptions of battles and the human misery of war are excellent as usual, but having to go to Rand McNally to trace the route of the army takes away from the flow of the novel. Plus, I’m never going to be able to build a bridge over the creek just by visualizing your directions. Please! — Tom • Martin R. Ganzglass is at it again. In this, the third in his series of Revolutionary War novels*, he has captured the extreme and deep seated patriotism of our nation’s forebears, the disdain of the British military and Loyalists and the cruel reality of war. Those . . .

Talking with Rob Schmitz (China), author of STREET OF ETERNAL HAPPINESS

May 12 2016

ROB SCHMITZ (China 1996-98) is the China correspondent for American Public Media’s Marketplace, the largest business news program in the U.S. with more than 12 million listeners a week. He has reported on a range of topics illustrating China’s role in the global economy, including trade, politics, the environment, education, and labor. In 2012, Schmitz exposed fabrications in Mike Daisey’s account of Apple’s Chinese supply chain on “This American Life,” and his report headlined that show’s much-discussed “Retraction” episode. The work was a finalist for the 2012 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. He has won two national Edward R. Murrow Awards and an award from the Education Writers Association for his reporting on China. Click to hear His Rob’s “Marketplace” stories. We emailed each other over the course of a few weeks for this interview, and I was helped with questions from a press releases from Crown Publishing about Rob’s new book . . .

Read This and Weep; PC/HQ and the Murder of Kate Puzey and other HQ Crimes

May 10 2016

Last January I wrote about Alan Toth (South Africa 2010-12) and his video project, Posh Corps. He wrote me, “Three years ago, I started working on the Posh Corps project. The idea was simple: to discuss the modern Peace Corps experience honestly. I wanted to cut through the mythology and the marketing, and capture the experience of volunteering in a rapidly changing world.” He has been doing that but recently he started to produce a series of Peace Corps reform podcasts. He recorded the interview with Kellie Greene in Washington D.C. at the end of February 2016. As Alan wrote me, “I spent the last few months tracking down documents and editing the podcasts. I’ve wanted to do stories about internal agency problems for some time. I do support Peace Corps, but I don’t support institutional incompetence. It seems clear that the agency has not focused on improving management for . . .

Lost Letter From Maria Thomas (Ethiopia)

May 08 2016

The Peace Corps Writers’ Maria Thomas Fiction Award is named after the novelist Maria Thomas [Roberta Worrick (Ethiopia 1971–73)] who was the author of a well-reviewed novel, Antonia Saw the Oryx First, and two collections of short stories — Come to Africa and Save Your Marriage and African Visas — all set in Africa. Roberta and Tom Worrick were married with a young son when they went to Ethiopia as a married couple with the Peace Corps. After their tour, they continued to live and work in Liberia and again to Ethiopia. This time Tom was working for US AID. In addition to her life as a wife, mother, and PCV, Roberta Worrick was a wonderful writer. Her stories appeared in Redbook, Story and The New Yorker. She was a Wallace E. Stegner Fellow and received an Overseas Press Club’s commendation for reportage in Harper’s. She was coming into her own as a literary figure when . . .

A Writer Writes: “Peace Corps Reflections” by Bob Criso (Nigeria)

May 03 2016

In the Peace Corps Bob Criso (Nigeria 1966-67) was in southeastern Nigeria, the village of Ishiagu, and then in the Somalia 1966-67 in the village of Bulo Burte. After the Peace Corps he worked in mental health, and also at Princeton University as a psychotherapist for students and with a private office in Princeton. He retired seven years ago and currently lives in New York City where he reviews plays, take photos (four exhibits), and writes memoir articles. • Peace Corps Reflections Bob Criso There I was, back in the sixties, teaching English at a rural school in eastern Nigeria, raising chickens in a coop behind my house and hustling to promote sales of the beautiful pottery in the village of Ishiagu. It seemed like a great gig — a house of my own, a humongous book locker filled with classic and contemporary gems, motivated students, friendly colleagues and, in . . .

“The Nzeogwu I Knew” by Tim Carroll (Nigeria)

May 02 2016

Editor’s Note: In February 2015, Roger Landrum (01) 1961–63, in the email below, alerted the newsletter staff of what he believed to be an interesting story about a friendship that had developed in Nigeria in 1965 between Peace Corps Volunteer Tim Carroll and a young major in the Nigerian army. Jim. I recently read Achebe’s Biafra memoir, There Was a Country. It has a brief section on Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, one of the five military majors who led the coup that triggered the chain of events leading to the Biafran secession and the civil war. Achebe calls Nzeogwu “a mysterious figure.” Maybe not all that mysterious! There was a Nigeria PCV named Timothy Carroll posted in Kaduna who was friends with Nzeogwu. I’m trying to convince Carroll to write a piece for the FON newsletter called “The Nzeogwu I Knew.” I think Nigeria RPCVs would find this fascinating. It . . .

“Be a Literary Agent” article on AWP website by John Coyne (Ethiopia)

Apr 28 2016

CAREER ADVICE Be a Literary Agent John Coyne profiles six literary agents and offers suggestions for that career path for the Association of Writers & Writers Programs Website. April 2016 I called a novelist friend (Mary-Ann Tirone Smith Cameroon 1965-67) and asked her if she knew of any MFA graduates who were employed as literary agents and she replied, “MFA graduates are writers, not agents.” She was categorically right, but she wasn’t totally correct. Just as there are book and magazine editors who also write fiction, nonfiction, or poems, there are also literary agents with BAs in English and/or MFAs in writing. Some later change horses and become agents, putting their own literary knowledge into play when advising their clients. Others continue to write but work as agents for the sake of having a steadier income while finishing their next novel or waiting for the last one to be made . . .

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