WorldView Magazine: Peace Corps Writers
Born to Serve
Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center board, reflects on his grandfather’s legacy, his experiences as an author, and his vision for the Carter Center as a new documentary about the effort to eradicate Guinea worm disease is released, and President Carter is honored with his own U.S. postal stamp.
A Million Miles: My Peace Corps Journey
This enthralling memoir from a former Peace Corps director follows the life of a curious and dedicated public servant, starting with her abandonment at age 3 and taking us through the next 76 exciting, joyful, and sometimes painful years of her life. Thankfully for the Peace Corps community, much of Jody Olsen’s life has included the agency, and her candid recollections are fascinating to read. But despite its title, A Million Miles: My Peace Corps Journey is as much about Olsen’s personal history as her professional one. She explores the dynamics of her childhood in a strict Mormon family, the...
The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue
Reading The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue feels like strolling through your hometown with an affable neighbor, one filled with a deep respect for the natural world and a pragmatic concern for its demise. On one level, Mike Tidwell recounts just a single year, 2023, in a Washington, D.C., suburb whose residents cope with the local effects of global climate change: the tombstone stumps of new-fallen trees, the sudden gaps in rich canopy across which the wind now blows “like human breath over the tops of empty bottles,” the flooding school basement, and the sidewalk berm installed as a countermeasure...
Married to Amazement
When Kathleen Coskran’s memoir kicks off by disclosing to her readers that she’s not just old, but old old (81 years), we can’t help but be drawn in by her humor and candor. She doesn’t claim to offer any pearls of wisdom, but instead offers up little snippets of wonder, glimpses of her extraordinary life experience. She offers us not pearls, but absolute gems. She opens with her first grand cross-cultural adventure, a crash course in amazement, when she accepts a Peace Corps assignment in 1965 teaching English and algebra in Ethiopia and confronts the uncomfortable revelations of American privilege...
Far from the Road: A Community Health Project in the Himalayas
The inspiring and dramatic events in Far from the Road unfolded half a century ago in the verdant, idyllic valley of Dhorpatan, at 9,000 feet elevation in Nepal. Ross Anthony, from Oklahoma City, a returned agricultural Volunteer, conceived the project alongside Nepal’s first NGO, Paropakar. With passion and persistence, “Ross the Boss” cobbled together shoestring-level funding and signed up Mary Murphy, a community health educator from suburban Washington, D.C. They recruited Stephen Bezruchka, a Stanford Medical School grad from Toronto, and were later joined by Mike Payne, a water systems engineer from Cleveland, Ohio. With ponies and porters, the team...
Before Before: A Story of Discovery and Loss in Sierra Leone
Betsy Small’s Before Before is a deeply personal and historically rich account of Sierra Leone, blending memoir and ethnography with emotional resonance. She draws from her Peace Corps service in the mid-1980s and a return visit in 2013 with her daughter to create a memoir that is more than a recollection—it is a meditation on cultural exchange, colonial legacy, and the fragile threads of memory that bind us across time and geography. Set in Tokpombu, a remote rainforest village in Sierra Leone’s diamond district, Small’s story begins with her assignment as an agricultural Volunteer tasked with improving rice yields despite...
Endless Horizons
Paul Neville’s memoir of backpacking around Southeast Asia and South America more than fulfills the promise in his subtitle: A Global Backpacker’s Quest for Adventure, Connection, and Discovery. Readers will find this self-published effort a thoroughly professional product. Expect to enjoy an assiduously edited, excellently laid out, and beautifully written book. After two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tonga, Neville’s “festering travel bug”—a condition nearly universal among returned Volunteers—launches him into a year of vagabonding on a shoestring budget. Intermingled with vivid travelogue, he tries to explain why. There is novelty, of course. Bangkok, his first stop, is...
Five Peace Corps Blogs That Cut Through the Clichés
From field notes to long-form essays, these writers capture the nuance and complexity of life abroad.
Afghanistan: For an Educator, a Journey Back to a Time of Peace
Afghanistan at a Time of Peace By Robin Varnum Peace Corps Writers Reviewed by Jordan Simmons Friends en route to a provincial school. Photo courtesy Robin Varnum Afghanistan at a Time of Peace traces Robin Varnum’s years as a Peace Corps Volunteer, 1971–73. Varnum chronicles her journey into learning the place she came to call home: adapting to the chilly weather in Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, and understanding why she and other foreigners are mocked as “Mister Kachaloo” (literally, “Mr. Potato” in Dari), and traversing the length and breadth of the country — from Jalalabad to Mazar-i-sharif. As a Volunteer...
An Audience with the King
For 30 years Ambika Joshee worked for the Peace Corps in Nepal. His memoir, The Life of a Nepali Village Boy, is a candid account of a country being transformed — and traces a personal quest for knowledge, justice, and understanding. Here is an excerpt. An Audience with the King By Ambika Mohan Joshee Bandipur is seven kilometers south of Dumre Bazar, which is on the Kathmandu-Pokhara highway. It is a small hilltop settlement with a population of about 16,000. About 1,030 meters above sea level, on a saddle of the Mahabharat range, it is a beautiful town with old Newari architecture. Houses...
SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER
Stay Updated
