On the Plain of Snakes
In the mountains near Oaxaca, tales of El Norte: among weavers and migrant workers who left family and home for work across the border — and returned. Conversations from a time before COVID. By Paul Theroux On a sojourn in pursuit of understanding, writer Paul Theroux set out five years ago to travel the length of the U.S.–Mexico border. Then he drove his old Buick south, visiting villages along the back roads of Chiapas and, here, a mountain town near Oaxaca. An excerpt from On the Plain of Snakes: A Mexican Journey. In the small Zapotec-speaking town of San...
How the May 1980 Democratic Uprising in South Korea Was Met with Brute Force: A First-Person Account
Witnessing Gwangju By Paul Courtright Hollym Publishers Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum Paul Courtright arrived in South Korea in 1979 to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer, based in a community near the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. He worked with patients afflicted with Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy. On May 19, 1980, on his way through the bus terminal in the provincial capital of Gwangju, he saw a young man being beaten by military special forces. A phone call to another Volunteer confirmed: “Something big” was going down in the city — part of a mass...
When Martin Luther King Jr. Was Arrested for Taking Part in a Student-Led Sit-In in Atlanta, It Could Have Cost Him His Life.
Nine Days The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life and Win the 1960 Election By Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick Farrar, Straus and Giroux Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum In October 1960, days after presidential candidate John F. Kennedy delivered an impromptu address at the University of Michigan that would spark the creation of the Peace Corps, a series of events were set in motion that loom large in the history of the civil rights movement. They arguably changed the course of the presidential election as well. On October 19, Martin Luther King Jr., at the urging of student...
Understanding a New Meaning of Home
Tales of Togo A Young Woman’s Search for Home in West Africa By Meredith Pike-Baky Peace Corps Writers Reviewed by Bill Preston This candid and heartfelt memoir chronicles the twists and turns, the ups and downs, and the sometimes sideways arc of Meredith Pike-Baky’s time teaching English and living in Togo in the early 1970s. Eager to escape political turmoil in the U.S., she finds in Togo a nation “in the beginning stages of delayed independence, having declared an end to French rule a decade earlier ... on the threshold of a new era, a heady, hopeful time for both...
For Years, Sarah Chayes Told U.S. Leaders in Afghanistan Truths They Did Not Want to Hear About Corruption. Now She Looks at What Is Corroding Democracy at Home.
On Corruption in America And What Is at Stake By Sarah Chayes Penguin Random House Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum Back in 2015, when Sarah Chayes published Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, she gave an interview in which she warned: “As far as Afghanistan is concerned, I think the window of opportunity to exert real leverage on governance and corruption is closed ... We had more than a decade, and we squandered a remarkable moment in history.” In August 2021, as the United States executed a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban returned to power, Chayes...
In ‘Last Best Hope,’ George Packer Seeks to Find a Way for Americans to Talk with Each Other Again
Last Best Hope America in Crisis and Renewal By George Packer Farrar, Straus and Giroux Reviewed by Marnie Mueller George Packer’s Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal is a self-described political pamphlet in long-form essay, not unlike Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, written in a period of change, about that very change. Packer’s goal is to find a way Americans can talk with each other again. A modest aim — but in this post-Trump era, perhaps an insurmountable task. Packer addresses what James Baldwin described as our tangled American problem: “In the same way that to become a social human being...
Park Experience, Antarctic Service, a National Press Foundation Award — and a Recently Appointed Rep in Raleigh
Recognition for three members of the Peace Corps community. And an RPCV appointed to the North Carolina Legislature. By NPCA Staff Photo: Shelton Johnson, recipient of the 2022 American Park Experience Award. Courtesy National Park Service Shelton Johnson | Liberia 1982–83 Shelton Johnson received the 2022 American Park Experience Award for his years of advocating for diversity in national parks and helping families and youth feel welcome by seeing their stories told there. Johnson has worked for the past 35 years as a ranger with the National Park Service at Yellowstone and now Yosemite National Park. His storytelling talents landed him a prominent...
A Memoir of a Journey from a Farming Village in Togo to Study in the U.S. And a Tribute to a Father Who Was Orphaned Before the Age of Two.
From Orphan to Greatness An African Story By Pierre Komi T. Adade Page Publishing “All his life, my father has done everything he could to help his children succeed,” writes Pierre Komi T. Adade. “As he likes to tell us, ‘My main goal in life is to help you succeed whatever the cost so you won’t have to suffer the way I did. I wasn’t fortunate enough to have someone help me.’ Yes, indeed, his life story has been full of tough experiences that bring him to tears whenever he talks about them. My father lost both his parents...
A Humble Man Who Believes There Is Good in Humanity and Is Committed to Justice
American Dreamer Memoirs of a Peace Corps Volunteer in Central America and Beyond By David Taylor Ives Epigraph Publishing Reviewed by Jim Skelton Decades before David Taylor Ives took on responsibilities as the executive director of the Albert Schweitzer Institute of Quinnipiac University, he served as a Volunteer in Costa Rica 1980–82. Included in this first-person chronicle, anchored by that experience, is a foreword by Leymah Gbowee and an introduction by Muhammad Yunus, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates. They introduce Ives as a humble man who believes there is good in humanity and is committed to justice. Ives grew up in Pierpont, Ohio, a...
In Papua New Guinea, Seeking to Understand Community — and an Act of Horrific Violence
The Tin Can Crucible A Firsthand Account of Modern-day Sorcery Violence By Christopher Davenport Lume Books Reviewed by Leo Cecchini The Tin Can Crucible is a fascinating account of how Christopher Davenport is inculcated into the customs, morals, values, and way of life in a village where he trains for his teaching assignment in Papua New Guinea, where he served as a Volunteer 1994–96. He documents the process that leads him to comply with the customs of his new family. The process is so complete that Davenport comes to accept what would be in his previous life a reprehensible act: After a...