The one about books

BOOKS! Gobble gobble! My humble opinions about the books I've read since embarking on my Peace Corps Response Panama adventure in October 2015. You'll find title, my rating and a short synopsis!

1) Serena by Ron Rash (3.5/5) - a wonderful novel (terrible terrible missed opportunity to create a spectacular movie with a cast like J.Law and Bradley Cooper) about a timber baroness in the south and her desire to control her husband and their timber operations

2) Room by Emma Donahue (4.5/5) - brilliantly told story of abduction from the perspective of Jack and his mother during captivity

3) Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (3.5/5 - set in the near future, it's a meh story about two insanely boring people trying to make a failed romance work

4) The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (4/5) - poignant WWII story about two sisters doing their part to support the Resistance

5) Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Marukami (4.7/5) - beautifully exploration of sub-consciousness

6) The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling) (3.5/5) - murder mystery that gets too caught up in small details to create a compelling story

7) Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (4.8/5) - Apparently it's Obama's favorite book of 2015 and already ranks in my top 3 of 2016! Unique story-telling narrative similar to others like Gone Girl and Serena (other favorites of mine). Lots of big vocabulary, too, perfect for studying for the GRE!

8) Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (4.5/5) - A easy-to-understand history of North Korea told through the stories of six brave defectors. Easy entry book to understand what is North Korea! Highly recommend.

9) Euphoria by Lily King (5/5) - By far my favorite book of the past year, it was on plenty of official "Best of 2014" lists and I'm just getting around to it a few years later. About an anthropologist couple spending time in a tribal community in New Guinea. Speaks to the complexity of living in another culture and the beauty of learning from other people - helpful for PCVs and non-PCVs alike.

10) Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari (4/5) - A hilarious book about dating in the modern era of technology. Makes me want to throw my iPhone in the ocean and never download the Tinder app, however, dating apps now account for more than 30% of marriages, so get swiping!

11) Redeployment by Phil Kaye (4/5) - A fictional compilation of short stories form Iraq/Afghan veterans and their experiences on deployment.

12) This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital by Mark Leibovich (4.5/5)

13) Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (5/5) - Should be required reading. It tells the tale of being black in America through a letter Coates writes to his son.

14) Father of the Rain by Lily King (4.5/5) - A wonderfully told tale about a girl-then-teenager-then-woman's relationship with her alcoholic father. I wanted to simultaneously strangle and hug the narrator the entire time and she took me through the gambit of emotions and strange family relationships.

15) The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende (4.5/5) - Wonderful! Read it now.

16) A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra (4/5) - It took a while for me to get into this book because off the complexity of all the characters involved in the story but as I got used to the storyline and used to Marra's prose, I feel deeply in love. Set in Chechnya during wartime, it's a beautiful story of the complexities of life and love.

17) Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (4.8/5) - I love the way she writes and brings you into the harsh reality that is the Nigeria-Biafra War in 1960s Nigeria. Told from the vantage point of three characters, it elegantly expresses the beauty and tragedy of themes like close relationships, war, peace, and education.

18) No One Every Has Sex on a Tuesday by Tracy Bloom (1/5) - This book is so mind-numbingly dull that I have nothing to say about it other than "meh." It's about a woman who is eight months pregnant and doesn't have a supportive partner or know which of two men the father is, so basically it's 221 pages of my worst nightmare.

19) The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (4/5) - 2016 Pullizter Prize winner and the third on my war novel streak, this book is a complicated, intense, dynamic and poetic account of a "sympathizer" from Vietnam's confession of supporting his native country. Anyone want to have a book club and discuss? This one deserves a lot of unpacking!

20) Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein  (4/5) - I was over the tragic war novel stories and took my stab at this non-fiction book. I'd heard Sunstein explaining many concepts brought up in Nudge on a favorite podcast, Freakonomics, and thought I'd give it a go. An approachable way to understand the way humans make decisions and the ways in which we can nudge humans to make better decisions in all areas. Plus, it feels like I'm getting some really good economic tips too.

On books and kale

¡Olé!

Last week was the most relaxing and a much needed tranquil break! Everyone had the week off for Semana Santa (Holy Week) and I stayed in Manzanillo and was cogiendolo suave (taking it easy). I slept in, cleaned, organized, ate sweet bean dish at all my favorite doñas houses, took a beach day, painted my nails, worked out, went to a merengue show with my grandma and extremely fashionable aunt and read three books.

One of the books I finished this week was Wild by Cheryl Strayed. It’s quite popular in America (so I hear) and I wanted to see what the fad was all about. Glad I did because it was a great read! Quick synopsis: Wild is a true story of one woman's journey hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Oregon back in the 1990s. In documenting her travels, she simultaneously explains real-life problems like divorce, her mother dying, and a crumbling family life. Even though her life situation was/is completely different from mine, it was amazing to read how relatable her trail life is to my life here in the Peace Corps. PCT life is just like PCV life I suppose! A few quotes in particular have really hit home for me. Here’s my list of relatable quotes and a lil commentary on each one.

• “My new existence was beyond analogy, I realized on that second day on the trail. I was in entirely new terrain. What a mountain was and what a desert was were not the only things I hadn't expected. I hadn't expected the flesh on my tailbone and hips and the fronts of my shoulders to bleed. I hadn't expected to average a bit less than a mile an hour...” 

Within my first month as a volunteer, I realized that my Peace Corps life is beyond analogy. What a culture is and what a volunteer does were not the only things I had my own expectations for. I hadn't expected to be living in a food desert, living teasingly close to comforts of America, never being alone, and constantly being constipated. I hadn't expected that my community projects wouldn't always work out as planned. And trying compare it “all” (my town, my job, my emotions, my challenges, the culture, the food, etc) to anything else in the world is impossible.

• “I staggered north toward Kennedy Meadows, furious with myself for having come up with this inane idea. Elsewhere, people were having barbeques and days of ease, lounging by lakes and taking naps. They had access to ice cubes and lemonade and rooms whose temperature was 70 degrees. I knew those people. I loved those people. I hated them too, for how far away they were from me, near death on a trail few had ever heard of.”

What gets me is that not even 2,000 miles away, people are having barbeques, doing hot yoga, drinking good beer, eating kale, easily streaming Netflix, eating hot cheetos, having wifi everywhere, and experiencing climate controlled rooms. But then again, those same people don’t get coffee 24/7, rice and beans everyday, merengue/bachata music all hours of the day, to walk to work, Caribas platano chips, tostones, or the thrill of riding a motorcycle around town!

• “I stopped in my tracks when that thought came into my mind, that hiking the PCT was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Immediately I amended the thought...Hiking the PCT was hard in a different way. In a way that made the other hardest things the tiniest bit less hard. It was strange but true.”

I wish someone had told me before I started how mentally difficult this job would be. It takes serious mental strength to get from day to day sometimes. And in the process, I’ve become my own biggest advocate, critic and motivator. It’s been the best exercise in finding power within myself. It’s a different kind of hard than I’ve ever known, but I suppose it can only make things I hope to do in the future that much easier.

• “By the end of that second week, I realized that since I’d begun my hike, I hadn’t shed a single tear.”

I still haven’t cried hard and good here and it’s been over 8 months! I guess that means it’s going well?

• As I walked, I didn’t think of those snowy peaks. Instead, I thought of what I would do once I arrived at the Kennedy Meadows General Store that afternoon, imagining in fantastic details all the things I would purchase to eat and drink...I pictured the moment when I would lay hands on my first resupply box, which felt to me like a monumental milestone, the palpable proof that I’d made it at least this far.”

 This quote resonates mostly because I spend time picturing the moment when I will lay hands on my next care package, which feels to me like a beautiful godsend, especially when it contains some combination of almond butter, Orbit gum, chocolate, Samoa Girl Scout cookies, dried mangos, chapstick, Reach mint waxed floss, new shirts, granola, nuts, fresh underwear and love notes.

• “I spent hours in a half-ecstatic, half-tortured reverie, fantasizing about cake and cheeseburgers, chocolate and bananas, apples and mixed-green salads, and more than anything, about Snapple lemonade. This did not make sense. I’d had only a few Snapple lemonades in my pre-PCT life and liked them well enough, but they hadn’t stood out in any particular way. It had not been my drink. But now it haunted me. Pink or yellow, it didn’t matter. Not a day passed that I didn’t imagine in vivid detail what it would be like to hold one in my hand and bring it to my mouth. Some days I forbade myself to think about it, lest I go entirely insane.

For me, it’s not Snapple lemonade, but more a combination of the things I can’t have. Kale enters my mind a lot, as does spinach. And iced tea and iced coffee. And as she remarks, some days I forbid myself from even thinking about American pleasures, lest I go insane. It’s the worst when I’m talking on the phone to my momma and she’s munching away on something so I go ahead and ask, “what’s that you’re eating over there?” and she’ll reply “oh, sorry honey, it’s a caramel from Trader Joes” or “it’s just a kale salad dad’s making.” It’s torture! And the snapchats yall send of delicious meals...rude! 

• “As difficult and maddening as the trail could be, there was hardly a day that passed that didn’t offer up some form of what was called trail magic in the PCT vernacular – the unexpected and sweet happenings that stand out in stark relief to the challenges of the trail.”

Yes, the Peace Corps is challenging and frustrating a lot of the time, but it’s also so much fun and so beautiful that I get to experience a new culture, live here, make friends here, hang out on porches, work with youth and mothers, and just be here. Every day, month, project, and experience is a net positive even if the accumulation of its parts comes with negatives.

• “The PCT had gotten easier for me, but that was different from it getting easy.”

I’ve taken to writing in a journal and when I reflect back on entries from months ago, I can see how far I’ve come and grown and that’s been inspiring to me and truly powerful. And looking forward I see how much there is left to do, and think to myself than in one month, two months, six months, I’ll be looking back on today thinking how much more satisfying it will become. In 8 months here, certain things have gotten easier. Like the food, and the bugs, and the lack of water and electricity. But it is far from easy – a word I would never use to describe being a PCV. It’s been a combination of challenging, rewarding, satisfying, infuriating, miserable, amazing, inspiring and tough – but never easy.

• “Thank you, I thought over and over again. Thank you. Not just for the long walk, but for everything I could feel finally gathered up inside of me; for everything the trail had taught me and everything I couldn’t yet know, though I felt it somehow already contained within me.”

I suppose it’s too soon to know what this experience has taught me, but I do know that everyday, being here teaches me something. I’ve been keeping a journal (thanks to Carolyn and Roy, who sent me down here with plenty of Moleskins!) and will hopefully be able to reflect in time on the experience and the lessons learned. But I do not that there is something here invaluable that I will take away in the end. Too hard to put a finger on it just yet, or maybe I never will, but it’s here with me!

¡Nos checkeamos!

B