Here are 68 books that The Tin Can Crucible fans have personally recommended if you like
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Although two of my nonfiction booksâThe Dream of Water and Polite Liesâare about traveling from the American Midwest to my native country of Japan, I'm not a traveler by temperament. I long to stay put in one place. Chimney swifts cover the distance between North America and the Amazon basin every fall and spring. I love to stand in the driveway of my brownstone to watch them. That was the last thing Katherine Russell Rich and I did together in what turned out to be the last autumn of her life before the cancer sheâd been fighting came back. Her book, Dreaming in Hindi, along with the four other books Iâm recommending, expresses an indomitable spirit of adventure.
In the summer of 1996, Ms. Brkic joined a Physicians for Human Rights forensic team in Eastern Bosnia to excavate the mass graves of the Srebrenica massacre. Ms. Brkic, who grew up in Northern Virginia, had family connections in the Balkans. Her grandmother, Andelka, was from Herzegovina, in a small village among limestone hills. The family survived the Second World War and the Communist takeover of their country. Her father escaped from Yugoslavia in 1959 and settled in America.
Stone Fields juxtaposes the family story with the story of the summer Ms. Brkic spent on the forensic team in Tuzla and with her friends and relatives in Zagreb. The author portrays the many ways that people can lose their homesâthrough war, genocide, political oppression, emigration, family discordâwith heartbreaking clarity, always aware of the dignity, as well as the tragedy, of the survivorsâ lives.
Twenty-three years old, forensic archaeologist Courtney Brkic joined a UN-contracted team excavating mass grave sites in eastern Bosnia. She was drawn there by her family history - her father is Croatian - and she was fluent in the language. As she describes the gruesome work of recovering remains and transcribing the memories of survivors, she reimagines her family's own catastrophic history in Yugoslavia. Alternating chapters explore her grandmother's life: her childhood in Herzegovina, early widowhood and imprisonment during the Second World War for hiding her Jewish lover. The movement throughout the book between the past and the present has aâŚ
Although two of my nonfiction booksâThe Dream of Water and Polite Liesâare about traveling from the American Midwest to my native country of Japan, I'm not a traveler by temperament. I long to stay put in one place. Chimney swifts cover the distance between North America and the Amazon basin every fall and spring. I love to stand in the driveway of my brownstone to watch them. That was the last thing Katherine Russell Rich and I did together in what turned out to be the last autumn of her life before the cancer sheâd been fighting came back. Her book, Dreaming in Hindi, along with the four other books Iâm recommending, expresses an indomitable spirit of adventure.
Katherine Russel Rich, who had spent 20 years as a magazine editor (and just as long as a cancer survivor: recounted brilliantly in her first book, The Red Devil: To Hell with Cancerâand Back), started studying Hindi because she needed a new language to describe her life during the messy process of remaking herself as an artistic rather than commercial writer. Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language is a memoir of the year she spent in the ancient city of Udaipur, where she lived with a local family and attended a Hindi language school.
This personal story is combined with fascinating information about second-language acquisition, as well as the profiles of various Americans and Europeans who made a home in India as a teacher, aid-worker, scholar, spiritual seeker, or in the case of one memorable character, a fortune/husband seeker. At times hilarious, other times heartbreaking, this isâŚ
An eye-opening and courageous memoir that explores what learning a new language can teach us about distant worlds and, ultimately, ourselves.
After miraculously surviving a serious illness, Katherine Rich found herself at an impasse in her career as a magazine editor. She spontaneously accepted a freelance writing assignment to go to India, where she found herself thunderstruck by the place and the language, and before she knew it she was on her way to Udaipur, a city in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, in order to learn Hindi. Rich documents her experiencesâranging from the bizarre to the frightening to theâŚ
Although two of my nonfiction booksâThe Dream of Water and Polite Liesâare about traveling from the American Midwest to my native country of Japan, I'm not a traveler by temperament. I long to stay put in one place. Chimney swifts cover the distance between North America and the Amazon basin every fall and spring. I love to stand in the driveway of my brownstone to watch them. That was the last thing Katherine Russell Rich and I did together in what turned out to be the last autumn of her life before the cancer sheâd been fighting came back. Her book, Dreaming in Hindi, along with the four other books Iâm recommending, expresses an indomitable spirit of adventure.
Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All portrays the contact between seeming opposites: the author who grew up in Boston and traveled to New Zealand when she was a graduate student in Australia and the Maori man she met there and married; the âcolonizersâ who were her direct ancestors and the ânativesâ her husband descended from; the history of the encounters between the two groups (including the story of Captain Cook). At the heart of this complex, mesmerizing, and unflinching story is the coupleâs devotion to their three sonsâboys growing up in a Boston suburb and navigating their identities as âa little bit of the conqueror and the conquered, the colonizer and the colonizedâ as Ms. Thompson explains to them in a letter she tucks into the folder containing her life insurance policy.
Come On Shore and We Will Kill And Eat You All is a sensitive and vibrant portrayal of the cultural collision between Westerners and Maoris, from Abel Tasman's discovery of New Zealand in 1642 to the author's unlikely romance with a Maori man. An intimate account of two centuries of friction and fascination, this intriguing and unpredictable book weaves a path through time and around the world in a rich exploration of the past and the future that it leads to.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorâand only womanâon a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
Although two of my nonfiction booksâThe Dream of Water and Polite Liesâare about traveling from the American Midwest to my native country of Japan, I'm not a traveler by temperament. I long to stay put in one place. Chimney swifts cover the distance between North America and the Amazon basin every fall and spring. I love to stand in the driveway of my brownstone to watch them. That was the last thing Katherine Russell Rich and I did together in what turned out to be the last autumn of her life before the cancer sheâd been fighting came back. Her book, Dreaming in Hindi, along with the four other books Iâm recommending, expresses an indomitable spirit of adventure.
When Pamela Petro traveled to Lampeter, Wales for the first time to enroll in a year-long masterâs degree program, she had no idea that the open vista of sheep pastures and low hills around the town would strike a chord in herâshe found herself nodding as if she was in agreement with the landscapeâor that she would spend the rest of her life returning to Wales from the various American cities where she made a life as a writer and a teacher. The Long Field takes us on a journey through time and ideas as well as of places.
The book masterfully weaves together the accounts of various trips to Wales and elsewhere, the childhood spent in suburban New Jersey where, in spite of the family she loved and was loved by, Ms. Petro was overcome by a desire not to stay in one place, and most important of all,âŚ
The Long Field burrows deep into the Welsh countryside to tell how this small country became a big part of an American writer's life. Petro, author of Travels in an Old Tongue, twines her story around that of Wales by viewing both through the lens of hiraeth, a quintessential Welsh word famously hard to translate. It literally means "long field," but is also more than the English approximation of "homesickness." It's a name for the bone-deep longing felt for someone or something--a home, culture, language, a younger self--that you've lost or left behind. Hiraeth is embodied by Arthur, King ofâŚ
I am a returned U.S. Peace Corps volunteer who served as a community health worker and educator in Zambia from 2004-2006. My highly-anticipated debut memoir, The Color of the Elephant: Memoir of a Muzungu, a Zola Award finalist, releases January 2022. As an avid reader of adventurous, fish-out-of-water tales, Iâve read dozens of memoirs by fellow Peace Corps volunteers whoâve served all around the world from the 1960s to the present day. These are my top picks based on literary merit, engaging storytelling, and pure heart.
Truly a âtwo for the price of oneâ read! This tale begins in the early days of the Peace Corps, where newlyweds Laurie and Rich are assigned volunteer posts in Niger (pronounced nee-zher), Laurie as a public health worker, and Rich on an agricultural assignment at a peanut cooperative. Packed with lively prose and riveting tales of close calls, humorous misunderstandings, finding oneâs feet, discovering meaning in the midst of suffering, and the bewildering feeling of displacement upon arriving back in the States, the first half of the story encompasses all the earmarks of a âclassicâ Peace Corps experience.
After 30 years, Laurieânow remarried, mother of grown children, and retired from an active career in liberal politicsâtravels back to Niger to reconnect with loved ones. Despite the chafing between this American womanâs independent spirit and the restrictive patriarchal Muslim society, along with the inevitable modernization of the humble agrarianâŚ
In this delightful and insightful memoir of a mid-century American girl coming of age as a new bride in a remote village in Niger, West Africa, Laurie Oman generously shares a unique place and time that will live on in readers' hearts forever. We are right there with her as she fumbles and faux pas her way into the role of a valued member of the community as a health educator, unprepared emergency midwife, and ultimately trusted friend. So deep were the bonds from her two-year Peace Corps stay in the 1960s, that thirty years later she was invited toâŚ
I have a passion for proving women can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone they want! Iâve lived in, worked in, and explored more than 20 countries, traveling by foot, train, truck, bus, boat, camel, donkey cart, and motorcycle. Iâm an award-winning creative nonfiction writer and a former National Motorcycle Instructor. My writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, Far Eastern Economic Review, Travelersâ Tales, and more. I'm a Hedgebrook Writersâ Colony alumna and hold a bachelorâs degree in journalism from Indiana University and a masterâs degree in creative nonfiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College.Untethered: A Womanâs Search for Self on the Edge of IndiaâA Travel Memoiris my first book.
A story about a white, 24-year-old woman traveling alone in a country where some still practice cannibalism begs to be read. Kira Salak sets out solo in a dugout canoe in Papua New Guinea simply to prove a woman can go anywhere and do anything she wants. In her narrative, she describes the people and wildlife she encounters vividly. I learned a thing or two about hippopotami and concluded I donât want to run into any in the wild. While she explores her inner thoughts, family life, and what compelled her to do such a thing, it is her physical journey that propelled me to keep reading. I wanted to know what happened next!
Following the route taken by British explorer Ivan Champion in 1927, and amid breathtaking landscapes and wildlife, Salak traveled across this remote Pacific island-often called the last frontier of adventure travel--by dugout canoe and on foot. Along the way, she stayed in a village where cannibalism was still practiced behind the backs of the missionaries, met the leader of the OPM--the separatist guerrilla movement opposing the Indonesian occupation of Western New Guinea--and undertook an epic trek through the jungle.
The New York Times said "Kira Salak is tough, a real-life Lara Croft." And Edward Marriott, proclaimed Four Corners to beâŚ
I am a returned U.S. Peace Corps volunteer who served as a community health worker and educator in Zambia from 2004-2006. My highly-anticipated debut memoir, The Color of the Elephant: Memoir of a Muzungu, a Zola Award finalist, releases January 2022. As an avid reader of adventurous, fish-out-of-water tales, Iâve read dozens of memoirs by fellow Peace Corps volunteers whoâve served all around the world from the 1960s to the present day. These are my top picks based on literary merit, engaging storytelling, and pure heart.
Breathtaking in its honesty and poetic style, this is the Peace Corps memoir âhidden gemâ youâll be glad youâve unearthed! Eleanor and her husband are newlyweds sent to the remote Portuguese-based Creole-speaking islands of Cape Verde. Not long after arriving, Eleanor develops an eating disorder that drains the vitality of her body, her mind, her work, and her marriage. The narrative nimbly weaves poetic imagery, keen observation, personal stories, history, and geography lessons together into a fascinating literary tapestry. This is a story about fidelity, the search for meaning, the frailty of the human condition, suffering, perseverance, and redemption; in short: a survivorâs story.
Twenty-two and newly married, Eleanor Stanford and her husband join the Peace Corps and find themselves on the West African islands of Cape Verde. In this beautifully alien place, as she teaches her students and struggles to come to terms with the island's fascinating yet frustrating culture, Eleanor watches everything she knows about relationships get flipped upside-down and attempts to hide the eating disorder she's developed, which threatens both her marriage and her life. Part travelogue, part cultural documentary, 'Historia, Historia' combines journalistic excellence with the gripping style of personal memoirs to bring you this lyrical, moving portrait of anâŚ
I grew up on a small farm, expecting to return to it after college, but I was inspired by books and by a teacher to focus instead on alleviating hunger and poverty problems in developing countries and two years working with the rural poor in Colombia in the Peace Corps helped me understand the need to attack these problems at both the household and policy levels. I taught courses and wrote on agricultural development issues at Virginia Tech for forty years and managed agricultural projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I am passionate about improving food security and human health and treating people with respect regardless of their circumstances.
Many Peace Corps memoirs have been penned, but this account of the authorâs experience living and working with a midwife in a remote village in Mali is my favorite because it captures in moving, page-turning prose the depth of the bond that develops between the author and her local counterpart, Monique.
I loved how the story immersed me in the local culture, gender relations, and medical reality as Monique fought, with determination and good humor, to save lives and provide hope to vulnerable women. It is also a story, as it is for many Peace Corps volunteers and was for me, of growing up and broadening horizons during a formative time.
Monique Dembele saves lives and dispenses hope in a place where childbirth is a life-and-death matter. Her unquenchable passion to improve the lot of the women and children in her West African village is matched by her buoyant humour in the face of unhappy marriage and backbreaking work. This is the deeply compelling story of the rare friendship between a young development volunteer and this midwife who defies tradition and becomes - too early in her own life - a legend.
Iâm a serial memoirist (two published, two more to come), and a true fan of well-written memoir. I read all kinds, but my favorites often combine coming-of-age with unusual travel or life choices. I love getting inside the authorsâ heads, discovering not just what they did, but why, and how they felt about it later, and what came next. Great memoirs take us out of our own lives and into settings, situations, and perspectives we may never experience. What better way to understand how other people live and move and think and feel? Fiction is fine, but a unique true story hooks me from start to finish.
This engrossing memoir drops us into the heart of Zambia as the authorâanother novice on a big adventureâevolves into an unflappable hut-dweller, dealing bravely and humorously with the absolute unfamiliarity of her Peace Corps assignment.
Intrepid and disarming, Christine is the only muzungu (white person) in her villageâtall, blonde, and frequently klutzy, her misadventures on full display to her curious neighbors. I fell in love with the author and her quest to overcome even the thorniest cultural challenges, all related in present tense so weâre right there with her.
My own African adventure unfolded many years earlier in the urban jungle of Lagos, so this is a captivating account of an entirely different African experience.
An outstanding new voice in memoir, Christine Herbert takes the reader on a âtime-machine tourâ of her Peace Corps volunteer service as a health worker and educator from 2004â2006 in Zambia. Rather than a retrospective, this narrative unfolds in the present tense, propelling the reader alongside the memoirist through a fascinating exploration of a life lived âoff the grid.â
At turns harrowing, playful, dewy-eyed and wise, the authorâs heart and candor illuminate every chapter, whether she is the heroine of the tale or her own worst enemy. Even at her most petulant, the laugh-out-loud humor scuppers any âwhite saviorâ mentalityâŚ
Merri Melde has spent over two cumulative years of her life traveling, answering to an inexplicable need to see the world, to experience different adventures, cultures, people and places.
Taken from her travel journals, Somewhere Else features some of her backpack travels in Nepal, where she trekked the Annapurna Circuit;âŚ
I was born in England but was âexportedâ to Malaya/sia in the 1950s, where my father worked as an engineer. I developed a life-long love for the languages and cultures of the region. I did Chinese Studies at Leeds University and then went to study Chinese literature in China, arriving there in 1976. I have retained a love and fascination for the Far East and have lived and worked in tertiary institutions in Burma, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. I loved the books on my list because they all added to my knowledge of China but in very different ways.
This is a wonderful memoir about teaching English in a school in a small town on the banks of the Yangtze River in Sichuan. Hessler was the first foreigner to live in the town for several decades, and I loved reading about how he learned more about himself from his students and his own understanding of what it is like to be immersed in a completely new cultural environment.
When Peter Hessler went to China in the late 1990s, he expected to spend a couple of peaceful years teaching English in the town of Fuling on the Yangtze River. But what he experienced - the natural beauty, cultural tension, and complex process of understanding that takes place when one is thrust into a radically different society - surpassed anything he could have imagined. Hessler observes firsthand how major events such as the death of Deng Xiaoping, the return of Hong Kong to the mainland, and the controversial consturction of the Three Gorges Dam have affected even the people ofâŚ