Brazil

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Carnival in Rio, by Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96)
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Ah, Where the Light Shines Through, First of four volumes of poetry by Patricia Waak (Brazil 1966-68)
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Review — TROPICAL ECSTASY by Norman Weeks (Brazil)
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Review — PADRE RAIMUNDO’s ARMY & Other Stories by Arthur Powers (Brazil)
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Review — BROOKLYN, NY TO BOCAIUVA, BRAZIL by Franklin Rothman (Brazil)
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Review — THE RELUCTANT VOLUNTEER by Peggy Constantine (Brazil)
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“Miriam’s Dream and a Peace Corps Story” by Joe Thigpen (Brazil)
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Talking with Frank Rothman, author of BROOKLYN NY TO BOCAIUVA, BRAZIL
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Franklin Rothman (Brazil) publishes BROOKLYN, NY to BOCAIUVA, BRAZIL
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Review — A HERO FOR THE PEOPLE by Arthur Powers (Brazil)
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Jay J. Levy & Sharon Levy (Brazil 1966–68)

Carnival in Rio, by Steve Kaffen (Russia 1994-96)

Carnival in Rio is bigger and better than anything of its kind. The all-night parades of samba schools in the Sambadrome, the most famous of the events, are mesmerizing in person and great memories thereafter. So are the hundreds of street parties, called blocos, where participants numbering from a few hundred to a million dance and sing and eat and hug, toast each other with extra-large bottles of beer, and renew old friendships and make new ones. Carnival is also a state of mind and being—of joy, spontaneity, camaraderie, and goodwill—that pervades the city and the country. Everyone sports a costume, even if it’s a cute crown or an outrageous hat or shirt or, popular with children, sneakers flashing multi-colored lights. In the Sambadrome, the spectators’ adrenalin starts to flow when a samba school begins its march down the parade route. As the marchers near each section, the entire grandstand . . .

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Ah, Where the Light Shines Through, First of four volumes of poetry by Patricia Waak (Brazil 1966-68)

A walk through the snow, attention to the life that is bursting forth around you, reading the ancient signs of life in the past are some of stories captured series of poems that illuminate the relationship between one’s self and the natural world. The epiphanies that come from being aware of the spiritual unfolding that is possible when you pay attention to the other beings that we share the earth with. Ah, Where the Light Shines Through speaks to the reader of what is always present around us if we but take notice. Available on Amazon.com

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Review — TROPICAL ECSTASY by Norman Weeks (Brazil)

  Tropical Ecstasy: A nostalgic trip to Brazil Norman  Weeks (Brazil 1968-70) Independently published 2020 282 pages $12.00 (paperback); $4.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Michael Varga (Chad 1977–79)  • How many RPCVs would like the opportunity to return to their place of service and survey the changes? That’s the premise of Norman Weeks’ memoir, Tropical Ecstasy. He returns to Brazil (in 1995) 25 years after his years as a Peace Corps Volunteer to his small city of Penedo. Language is an important part of his return, and he tries to communicate as often as he can in his dusty Portuguese. He wants to increase his encounters with locals, and knows that relying on English will not allow for a very deep understanding of the country so many years later. As he travels through Brazil — Manaus, Olinda, Recife, Maceio — on his way to his town, he laments that an oil slick, . . .

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Review — PADRE RAIMUNDO’s ARMY & Other Stories by Arthur Powers (Brazil)

  Padre Raimundo’s Army & Other Stories Arthur Powers (Brazil 1969–73) Wiseblood Books July 2021 201 pages $15.00 (paperback) Reviewed by Marnie Mueller (1963–65) • Recently I’ve read a number of works of fiction, written with a deceptive simplicity, so much so that one doesn’t realize at first how profound and skillfully constructed they are. Arthur Powers’ Padre Raimundo’s Army, a slim book of seventeen short stories set in Brazil from 1970 to the early 2000s is one such example. A little backstory: Powers joined the Peace Corps in 1969 and ended up staying for forty years working primarily as a community organizer in rural Brazil. Except for a few years stateside earning a Harvard law degree he returned to Brazil for decades more work. He had arrived in-country as a religious agnostic and eventually found deep faith and an activist home in the Catholic church. He married a woman . . .

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Review — BROOKLYN, NY TO BOCAIUVA, BRAZIL by Franklin Rothman (Brazil)

    Brooklyn, NY to Bocaiúva, Brazil: A Peace Corps Love Story Franklin D. Rothman (Brazil 1967–69) (Peace Corps memoir) Peace Corps Writers May, 2016 248 pages $14.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Almaz Zewdie Sullivan (Ethiopia 1996–98) • Franklin D. Rothman’s book, Brooklyn, NY to Bocaiúva, Brazil: A Peace Corps Love Story, brings back a lot of memories.  From the start, any Peace Corps Volunteer will relate to aspects of his story. Frank’s chance encounter with Lena, who is Brazilian, at the theater brings back positive memories of how open we tend to be as PCVs and travelers in general. He and Lena meet, they click and immediately the couple begins the exciting challenge of finding commonalities and building a relationship. Despite the differences in their upbringing, it is inspiring to read a story of how a love can flourish.  It is refreshing to see the level of commitment and the positive energy on . . .

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Review — THE RELUCTANT VOLUNTEER by Peggy Constantine (Brazil)

  The Relunctant Volunteer: My Unforgettable Journey with the Peace Corps in Brazil Peggy Constantine (Brazil 1970–71 ) BookBaby May 2016 156 pages $15.00 (paperback), $2.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Sally LaRue (Mongolia 2015–17) • The Reluctant Volunteer captures the Peace Corps experience in its uncanny ability to transcend time and place. When I started to read this, I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to relate since my own Peace Corps experience was over 40 decades after Constantine’s and in a completely different culture, climate, and time in our world. I was astonished to find that I could imagine it all and could relate in more ways than could ever be explained to someone who doesn’t have that experience. She beautifully depicts a realistic Peace Corps experience complete with all those self-conscious feelings of inadequacies, successes and failures, social factors most people don’t ever consider, and the multifaceted challenges . . .

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“Miriam’s Dream and a Peace Corps Story” by Joe Thigpen (Brazil)

  Miriam’s Dream and a Peace Corps Story by Joe Thigpen (Brazil 1963–65) • WHEN I WAS A young Peace Corps Volunteer in Capinzal, Santa Catarina, Brazil, I lived with Guilherme and Miriam Doin, along with their­­ four children, Zezo, Jota, Tânia, and Jane. I was 21, young and idealistic. I was committed to do my job in rural community development in this small community of about 1,000 people. I did not pay much attention to living in the small town, although I did play with the local soccer team, and eventually helped start a local basketball team. Many afternoons after a day in the nearby rural communities I would return to play backyard soccer with the boys and their dad, who was somewhat of a local star on the town’s number one team. For my Peace Corps project I was very fortunate to be part of the 4-H Club . . .

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Talking with Frank Rothman, author of BROOKLYN NY TO BOCAIUVA, BRAZIL

  In May Franklin D. Rothman (Brazil 1967–69) published his memoir Brooklyn, NY to Bocaiúva, Brazil: A Peace Corps Love Story with the Peace Corps Writers imprint. Here Frank talks about his Peace Corps days, life after Peace Corps and the writing of his memoir. • What was your Peace Corps project assignment in Brazil? Clubes Agricolas/Rural Community Action in Minas Gerais State (MG). The statewide project in selected municipalities in the interior of the state was conducted in coordination with State Secretaries of Agriculture and Education. Following a pre-assignment drop-off in the municipality of Carandaí, I expressed my desire to be assigned there, to join Lavonne Birdsall, who would be extending for her third year. Tell us about where you lived and worked. In the town of Carandai, I lived in a rented room known locally as the Palácio do Urubu (Vulture’s Palace). The property owner and his family lived . . .

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

  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 . . .

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Review — A HERO FOR THE PEOPLE by Arthur Powers (Brazil)

A Hero for the People: Stories of the Brazilian Backlands Arthur Powers (Brazil 1969-73) Press 53 170 pages 2013 $17.95 (paperback), $.99 (Kindle) Reviewed by Patricia Taylor Edmisten (Peru 1962-64) • I prefer novels to short stories, but I loved this book. Arthur Powers’ love for Brazil and its people began with his Peace Corps service in Brazil in 1969. Later Powers worked for the Catholic Church in the eastern Amazon region, where he organized subsistence farmers and rural worker unions. The author has received a Fellowship in Fiction from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, three annual awards for short fiction from the Catholic Press Association, and the 2012 Tuscany Press Novella Award for this book, A Hero for the People, his first collection of short stories. The book’s subtitle, Stories of the Brazilian Backlands, is fitting. All of the stories are located in Brazil’s backlands, although some take place more than . . .

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Jay J. Levy & Sharon Levy (Brazil 1966–68)

Monday, November 21 5:36 pm STEPPING OFF THE PLANE in Rio de Janeiro more than 20 years ago as newly trained Peace Corps Volunteers, most of us felt we were going to change things for the poor people of Brazil. After all, we had been trained in basic health skills and community development strategies. The formula for success was simple. All we had to do was make sure everyone boiled their water and sent their kids to school each day. And, of course, we would work to identify community leaders so that they could organize the poor to have a better life. Much, much later we would realize the formula for success was infinitely more complicated – that, in fact, the Brazilians had taught us much more about our own country than we had managed to teach them about overcoming poverty and powerless in theirs. After all, how could they . . .

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