Letters from Ghana 1968-1970 (Paperback) | Released: 12 Nov 2013

Several years back, author/editor Jon Thiem mentioned to a young woman (with a Ph.D.) that in the late 1960s he had served with the Peace Corps in Ghana, West Africa. She thought he was referring to a United Nations Peace Keeping operation! The incident inspired him to compile this collection of letters. The passionate 60s were, famously, a time of disastrous war, bloody protest, and disturbing cultural innovation. In this context, Peace Corps became a symbol of hope-a desperate hope that peace and progress might replace government-imposed violence. Thousands of (mainly) young Peace Corps volunteers scattered throughout the world to carry out a variety of humanitarian projects. The body of letters that resulted is a rich but neglected legacy. From August 1968 to June 1970, Thiem was a Peace Corps volunteer in a village in the rain forest of southern Ghana. There he taught English literature at the district secondary school. Every two weeks or so, he sent letters and audio tapes to the States, describing his day-to-day impressions of Ghana-the miseries and splendors of life in the tropics. The letters of Thiem and two other U.S. volunteers offer raw, immediate impressions of the daily routines, hard living, and cross-cultural labyrinths experienced by teachers in a rural equatorial environment. Composed during Peace Corps service, they bear the living marks of their own genesis. These texts are not memoirs informed by hindsight, but naive testimonies, fresh and ignorant of the future, filled with astonishment. Thiem's SDS background gives this collection a lot of political content, which takes in U.S. Vietnam policy, dramatic government changes in Ghana, school politics, village power struggles, and controversies about Peace Corps' mission. The letters not only give fascinating pictures of the United States as seen through Ghanaian eyes (in an era of limited access to world news), but also show how U.S. volunteers in Ghana struggle to grasp the eruptions of civil conflict and violence at home. Peace Corps set in motion energetic and far-reaching development campaigns, yet its efforts were denounced by both the political right and the left (for reasons discussed in the Introduction and letters). Its mission and effectiveness remain controversial to this day. With some justification, Peace Corps volunteers have been called "secular missionaries." This edition of letters takes into account recent studies that challenge the methods, ideologies, and political motives underlying development programs like Peace Corps. Many of the letters highlight the troubling contradictions that arise when a humanitarian organization intervenes in a society whose purposes and norms differ from the project of modernity. And yet the letters also complicate some of the easy generalizations made in such criticisms, which at times underrepresent the achievements of the modernizers and the strong desire on the part of African leaders and their constituents to improve education and health care. Another strand in this book tracks the efforts of Thiem and his colleague "Ohene" Owoahene to collect and translate Asante poems, an endangered oral tradition. It is ironic that Thiem went to rural Ghana to encourage modern thinking, but ended up becoming spellbound by the mythical world of Asante court poetry, which celebrates the bloody deeds and magical powers of ancient kings. The letters by writers other than Thiem make this a truly polyphonic-sometimes cacophonic-collection. There are texts by other Peace Corps volunteers and by correspondents from the U.S. The voices of Ghanaian nationals-teachers, students, politicians, and villagers-are "heard" in the letters and transcribed audio tapes. Other distinctive features of Letters from Ghana are an incisive introduction and individual commentaries that situate the letters in their historical, geographical, and personal contexts. The book includes a map, glossary, timeline, and 29 photos.
About the Author: Jon Thiem has lived in Colorado for the last 35 years. He is professor emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Colorado State University. It was through his Peace Corps service that he discovered his vocation as a teacher, translator, and scholar of literature. His numerous publications include Lorenzo de' Medici: Selected Poems and Prose (1991) and Rabbit Creek Country: Three Ranching Lives in the Heart of the Mountain West (2008), written in collaboration with his colleague Deborah Dimon. Rabbit Creek Country was a Finalist for the Colorado Book Award in 2009. Thiem and his Ghanaian colleague "Ohene" Owoahene published their translations of "Apaee: Heroic Poems of the Ashanti Court" in the journal Translation (Winter, 1978-79).