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Green Fires and Living on the Edge: Peace Corps' own Literary Genre by Nina Muller-Schwarze RPCVs have published over 350 books. One Connecticut publisher, Curbstone Press, sells a list of titles under the genre "Peace Corps writers", which includes any writer who has served time in the Peace Corps. "They began by writing letters home," observes John Coyne in his introduction to Living on the Edge, a collection of short stories by Peace Corps writers. I read two RPCV books from Curbstone Press. Some stories in Living on the Edge raise serious social questions, while others are humorous and lighthearted. The other book I read, Marnie Mueller's Green Fires: A Novel of the Ecuadorian Rainforest, although fiction, explores every social and intercultural issue since Europeans set foot in the land of South America. In Green Fires, a fictitous indigenous war against an oil company, entangles two U.S. tourists. Time in the Peace Corps gave the authors unique insider knowledge of a foreign culture. All the stories and Fires involve Americans or Europeans in developing countries, and the plots stem from each character acting within their own cultural values. A globalizing world is represented realistically. In the tradition of Joseph Conrad, some authors write about the imbecile foreigner. The "Ugly American" acts with confidence only to find his actions completely at odds within the local environment. The title "Mad Dogs", a story by Eileen Drew in Living On the Edge, refers not to the rabid dog who bites an American child, but rather to the European doctors and American embassy men who give chase to the animal with guns. The locals in the tranquil African community are greatly offended by the men barging into their houses, on the pretense of finding the dog. In a story by Paul Theroux (who left his service in Malawi early), a young volunteer rejects his native girlfriend's help, resulting in a putzi fly infection in his skin. The characters act stupidly, out of arrogance and misunderstanding the local culture and their role within it. In both books, foreign helping intentions bring horrific consequences in the local, and very different, culture. In Green Fires, the wealthy American boyfriend of a young volunteer naively gives out information resulting in the death of a communist insurgent from her site. Another volunteer character in Green Fires helps an oil company settle nomadic indigenous people, out of the belief he is improving their lives. In Living on the Edge, an American woman shares her lipstick and birth control information to an Arab teen, only to later find the girl on the street, thrown out of her house for breaking with tradition. Every culture adopts and changes the information volunteers leave to suit its needs. The stories amplify fears common to some volunteers, that our good intentions will morph out of our control and adversely affect people we had come to support. The juxtaposition of cultures and personal intentions leads to humor and embarrassment. The first-world characters mingling with the economically poorer natives leave readers' heads pounding with ethical questions. What can one think of the National Geographic photographer who changes the Pacific Islands woman's self-image? She no longer feels adequately modern, seeing herself immortalized as a cultural relic in her native dress and round face. The volunteer with the native girlfriend is a common motif. Paul Theroux's main character admits he could never marry his girlfriend because she is too poor and uneducated. Do these issues have easy ethical answers? The stories are not, however, solely negative about foreigners. In the witty "A Virgin Twice" short story, author Karl Luntla captures perfectly the perplexion of trying to comprehend personalities shaped by another cultural milieu. Villagers answer the volunteer's innocent questions with sayings, which are mind-numbing in their seeming failure to make sense. These sayings never get explained in the story. Perhaps PCVs here can relate, as we maneuver through a sea of "pa' Dios", "si Dios quiere" and "poco a poco como el viejo rayando el coco". In another story, an African magician plays a trick on an American tourist when he takes her to a skeleton-filled burial cave. All of her worst fears are realized, until the story's end, when the author lets the reader see how the African's actions were entirely normal and not at all frightening within his culture. Overall, the characters created by these authors are unforgettable. In Green Fires, a fat missionary in a long brown frock clandestinely works for the oil company and a loincloth wearing expatriate German lives deep in the rainforest, selling arms to the guerrillas. After two students mock him, young and determined volunteer Marc in John Coyne's story "Snow Man" surprises himself with tears streaming down his face. Out of the frustration, joys and general surrealness of the volunteer experience, the authors have created memorable tales. Native people as well as foreigners are complete human beings, with deep-seated cultural values which guide their actions and psyches. The unique viewpoint of the RPCV does require a new literary genre. |