Ecuador

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New books by Peace Corps writers | January — February 2024
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FROM MOUNTAINS TO MEDICINE by Erica Elliott (Ecuador)
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Kate Pongonis (Ecuador) shares lessons from the Peace Corps
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Review — THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador)
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New books by Peace Corps writers | July–August 2023
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Peace Corps reauthorization vote looming, needs support
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Talking with Marnie Mueller (Ecuador) about her new book THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER
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Review — THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador)
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Marnie Mueller (Ecuador) Gives Reading in Sharon, CT, August 4th
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THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador)
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Maggie (Wolcott) Nurrenbern (Ecuador) running for state senate
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John Clark (Ecuador) joins Sarasota’s Selby Gardens
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Review — ANDEAN ADVENTURES by Allan Wind (Ecuador)
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Mike Tidwell remembers Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador)
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Review: DRUMS FOR A LOST SONG, translated by Rob Gunther (Ecuador)

New books by Peace Corps writers | January — February 2024

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — CLICK on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards. We include a brief description for each of the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers  to order a book and/or  to VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW IT.  See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at marian@haleybeil.com, and she will send you a free copy along with a few instructions. P.S. In addition to the books listed below, I have on my shelf a number of other books whose authors would love for you to review. Go to Books Available for Review to see what is on that shelf. Please, please join in our Third . . .

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FROM MOUNTAINS TO MEDICINE by Erica Elliott (Ecuador)

  From Mountains to Medicine: Scaling the Heights in Search of My Calling Erica M. Elliott, M.D. (Ecuador 1974–1976) Lammastide Publishing January 2024 383 pages $19.95 (paperback), $16.99 (Kindle)   Erica Elliott resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she has a busy medical practice. Erica was born into a large family with a Swiss mother and an American father. Throughout her childhood, Erica moved with her family from one part of the world to another due to her father’s work. She began her schooling in England, graduated from high school in Germany, and then studied art in Florence, Italy, before returning to the States to attend college. The seeds for becoming a medical doctor were first sown when she spent a summer in Switzerland learning from her uncle, an eccentric and brilliant medical doctor. It took many years before those seeds sprouted. Erica came to medicine later than most . . .

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Kate Pongonis (Ecuador) shares lessons from the Peace Corps

  March 1 is an historic day in the annals of the Peace Corps. Sixty-three years ago on that date, President John F. Kennedy took a first step toward fulfilling a key campaign pledge when he signed Executive Order 10924, providing for the establishment, functions, and initial financing to launch this new, innovative program.   Kate Pongonis writes — “I was an agricultural extension volunteer in the highlands of Ecuador from 1992 to 1994 where I worked with subsistence farmers on agro-forestry and other soil conservation practices, taught environmental education, created organic demonstration gardens, and supported early childhood nutrition programs.  The Peace Corps taught me the importance of cross-cultural communication, to work in a community to identify and prioritize needs, and to lead by example.  I brought my experiences home to share with United States audiences the importance of understanding and interacting with our foreign neighbors and partners.  This is the . . .

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Review — THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador)

  The Showgirl and the Writer: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) Peace Corps Writers 488 pages July 2023 $16.95 (paperback) Reviewed by Eric Madeen (Gabon 1981-83) • By turns leaky and frypan, tarpaper roofed, roughshod dormitories imprisoned 18,000 people of Japanese descent by the end at Tule Lake Japanese American High Security Segregation Camp in Northern California from 1942 to 1946. One degradation followed another, as in the incarcerated being subjected to abominable hole-in-the-wood toilets open side by side all the way down the miserable line. Barbwire topped fences. Armed guards manned watch towers looking down on imprisoned Japanese Americans guilty of no crime. At night the sweep of search lights went back and forth like metronomes. Glazing the whole sad, evil spectacle at Tule Lake concentration camp was a grainy skin of black lava dust, and slathered across . . .

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New books by Peace Corps writers | July–August 2023

To purchase any of these books from Amazon.com — CLICK on the book cover, the bold book title, or the publishing format you would like — and Peace Corps Worldwide, an Amazon Associate, will receive a small remittance from your purchase that will help support the site and the annual Peace Corps Writers awards. We include a brief description for each of the books listed here in hopes of encouraging readers  to order a book and/or  to VOLUNTEER TO REVIEW IT.  See a book you’d like to review for Peace Corps Worldwide? Send a note to Marian at marian@haleybeil.com, and she will send you a free copy along with a few instructions. P.S. In addition to the books listed below, I have on my shelf a number of other books whose authors would love for you to review. Go to Books Available for Review to see what is on that shelf. Please, please join in our Third . . .

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Peace Corps reauthorization vote looming, needs support

  By Joel Mullen (Ecuador 1970-  ) Special to the Standard-Examiner | Aug 30, 2023 • In the next three months, 12 Utahns who are joining the Peace Corps will each ship off to spend two years at a site in a country that has requested Americans to live and work among them. I envy their coming adventures and experiences in learning new languages, cultures, foods, geographical landscapes, histories, and especially getting to befriend those they otherwise would never have gotten to know. In 1970, I was a new Peace Corps recruit in Ecuador. On the ride into town from Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport, I marveled at how young men jumped on and off moving city buses. They were daring and competent. Over my next few months in Ecuador, I became adept at running for public transportation, eventually expanding my skills to jump and run for my favorite train from . . .

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Talking with Marnie Mueller (Ecuador) about her new book THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER

  PCW: The Showgirl And The Writer is an unusual book about an unusual friendship. What initially drew you to your subject? Marnie: For fifteen years I was friends with Mary Mon Toy, a Japanese American showgirl who had been incarcerated in an America concentration camp during World War II. Our bond was the fact that I, though Caucasian, was born in the Tule Lake Japanese American High Security Camp in northern California, where my parents, young leftists, had gone to work . . . much as I joined the Peace Corps decades later,  As Mary aged, I became her Power of Attorney and, when she died, the Executor of her estate, and it was only upon her death that I learned that during her entire theater career, after being released from camp, she had passed as Chinese American. She had often regaled me with the story of her Chinese father, though she did . . .

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Review — THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador)

  The Showgirl and the Writer: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) Peace Corps Writers 488 pages July 2023 Reviewed by John Thorndike (El Salvador 1966-68)  • This powerful mix of personal and national history unfolds in three parts. First is Marnie Mueller’s own story, starting with her birth in the Tule Lake concentration camp for Japanese Americans, where her Caucasian parents were on the staff. In this relatively short section she describes her childhood, marriage, and life as a novelist. A longer second section traces her years as friend and caregiver to Mary Mon Toy, the showgirl of the title, an actress, dancer and singer of Japanese heritage who was incarcerated in 1942 in another of the “segregation camps.” Mary claims to be half Japanese and half Chinese, something Mueller believes during the years she takes care of the . . .

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Marnie Mueller (Ecuador) Gives Reading in Sharon, CT, August 4th

  Marnie Mueller will be signing her new book, THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER: A FRIENDSHIP FORGED IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION (published by Peace Corps Writers) this coming Friday, August 4 from 5:30 to 7:30 PM as an invited author at the Hotchkiss Sharon Library’s yearly book event in Sharon, CT on the Village Green at 18 Main Street.   https://hotchkisslibraryofsharon.org/book-signing-2023/ There is still time to get tickets. It is a wonderful event and a great opportunity to support a local library. Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) was born in the Tule Lake Japanese American Segregation Camp. She is the author of three novels: Green Fires, The Climate of the Country, and My Mother’s Island. She is a recipient of an American Book Award, the Maria Thomas Award for Outstanding Fiction, Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, New York Public Library Best Books for the Teenage, a New York Times Book Review New and Noteworthy in Paperback, and a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great . . .

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THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador)

  The Showgirl and the Writer: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration by Marnie Mueller (Ecuador 1963-65) Peace Corps Writers 488 pages July 2023 $16.95 (Paperback) The Showgirl and the Writer, A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration, by Marnie Mueller, is a hybrid memoir/biography. It encompasses Mueller’s own story, beginning at her birth to Caucasian parents in the Tule Lake Japanese American High Security Camp in Northern California, and tells the tale of her long friendship with Mary Mon Toy, a Nisei performer who was incarcerated in the Minidoka Japanese American Camp in Idaho during WWII. The two met by chance in 1994. By then Mueller was a published author and Mary Mon Toy by necessity of old age, had retired from an unusually successful career on stage and television, for an Asian American actor of her time. After Ms. . . .

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Maggie (Wolcott) Nurrenbern (Ecuador) running for state senate

Missouri State Representative Maggie Nurrenbern Launches Campaign for State Senate District 17 Press Release, February 22, 2023   Today, Missouri State Representative Maggie Nurrenbern, who was elected to represent House District 15 in 2020, is announcing her campaign for State Senate District 17. “I’ve always been proud to call the Northland home and I know we need leaders who will stand up as a voice of moderation, bring people together and actually achieve results that make a positive difference for our community. That’s exactly what I’ve done as a State Representative, working across the aisle, I’ve worked to deliver real solutions and investments in education, infrastructure and healthcare,” said State Representative Maggie Nurrenbern. “Now, I’m running for State Senate because as a mom of three, former local public school teacher and dedicated community volunteer, I have a renewed purpose to fight for great public education for every kid in our state, . . .

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John Clark (Ecuador) joins Sarasota’s Selby Gardens

John L. Clark PhD Joins Botany Staff at Selby Gardens TUESDAY JAN 31, 2023 |     Marie Selby Botanical Gardens [in Sarasota, Florida] recently welcomed Dr. John L. Clark to its staff as a full-time research botanist. Affiliated with Selby Gardens as a research associate since 2009, Clark has spent his professional career discovering and documenting plant diversity. His work concentrates on the plant family Gesneriaceae, or gesneriads, an important focus of Selby Gardens’ botanical research and a notable component of its living plant collection. An evolutionary biologist as well as a botanist, Clark studies plant systematics, evolution, and biodiversity, focusing on the identification, classification, phylogeny, and taxonomy of neotropical gesneriads. Gesneriads serve as scientific models for understanding broad patterns in the evolution, pollination, and diversification of plants. About a third of gesneriads are epiphytes (a type of plant that grows on another plant without harming it), and Clark’s . . .

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Review — ANDEAN ADVENTURES by Allan Wind (Ecuador)

  Andean Adventures: An Unexpected Search for Meaning, Purpose and Discovery Across Three Countries Allan “Alonzo” J. Wind (Ecuador 1980–82) Self-published August 2020 270 pages $14.99 (paperback), $4.19 (Kindle), $17.46 ( Audible) Reviewed byD.W. Jefferson (El Salvador 1974–76; Costa Rica 1976–77) • Allan Wind knew he wanted to join the Peace Corps from pretty early in his life. But he expected that he would serve two years abroad and then return to the US and continue his career. He became a Peace Corps volunteer (PCV) and served for two years in Ecuador but after that he did not return home. He stayed on in Ecuador, working in development, later working in Bolivia and Peru as well. This is a memoir of the early years of Wind’s lifelong career in development. He begins his journey after college in 1980. From the beginning he is an agitator, always trying to go beyond his job . . .

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Mike Tidwell remembers Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador)

  Moritz Thomsen (Ecuador 1965-67) died of cholera in Guayaquil, Ecuador on August 28, 1991. In March 1993 in our newsletter Peace Corps Writers we published an essay entitled “Ashes on the River Esmeraldas” written by Mike Tidwell (Zaire 1985-87). Tidwell who had published his Peace Corps story The Ponds of Kalambayi: An African Sojourn that won the RPCV Writers & Readers’ Paul Cowan Non-Fiction Award in 1991. Mike’s book, Sargent Shiver told me, was one of the best accounts of Peace Corps service.  •   Ashes on the River Esmeraldas Quite fitting that on my first morning in Quito, Ecuador, there to visit the buried ashes of Moritz Thomsen, I watched a dirty waif wrap his arms around a gringo tourist’s leg, begging for coins, refusing to let go. To free himself, the tourists made the boy fetch like a pathetic dog, throwing some coins toward a trash heap, . . .

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Review: DRUMS FOR A LOST SONG, translated by Rob Gunther (Ecuador)

  Drums for a Lost Song (novel) by Jorge Velasco Mackenzie Rob Gunther (Ecuador 2009–2002) (Translator) Hanging Loose Press 200 pages March 2017 $18.00 (paperback) Reviewed by Jim Criste (PC Staff/Ecuador 1999-02) • Ecuador is an incredibly diverse country in so many ways. Jorge Velasco Mackenzie takes us on a journey through one part of that diverse country, the western lowlands along the Pacific Coast, to places both known and unknown, real and imagined. Drums for a Lost Song seems to be the literary equivalent of a school of painting in Ecuador known as “Magical Realism.” This is pointed out clearly by the translator in his afterword where he cites, “One of Velasco’s themes is the slippery nature of what we call “facts” or “truth. . .,” which just shows that Velasco was ahead of his time in the use of “alternate facts.” The reader is challenged not only to sort out what may . . .

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