African Identities has just published my "At the Heart of Things: Peace Corps Volunteers in Sub-Saharan Africa." I started working on this piece nearly two years ago, after my first trip to Ghana got me interested in how people from the U.S. react to Africa. So I read a lot of accounts from Peace Corps Volunteers, many of them extraordinarily rich and moving.PCVs at first came to Africa expecting to share the benefits of American civilization. But a growing disillusionment with mainstream American culture prompted more and more to come looking to find answers rather than to offer solutions. Of course Africa often confounded these more romantic expectations, too. One of my better sentences in the piece: "Africa confronted volunteers with communities they could not join, privileges they could not shed, and tragedies they could not fix."
This is a link to the journal's home page. You can also just ask me for a copy of the article (I ordered a bunch) or access it through a research library.
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