Citizenship | Literature
Select novels, short stories, and nonfiction on contemporary life.
Ben East’s nonfiction debut recounts how JFK’s bold experiment shaped diplomatic careers and influenced modern American diplomacy.
Read, Listen, Watch
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Peace Corps taught Pamela White that learning English was no fun in Cameroon with Eurocentric texts filled with poodles. So she generated her own materials.
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Metrinko was cleaned up and brought to meet Tehran’s Friday prayer leader Ali Khamenei. In the room were a camera crew and the SFIL spokesperson, Niloufar Ebtekar
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Before enduring 444 days of captivity at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Michael Metrinko served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkey (1968-70) and Iran (1970-73).
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Afghan Finance Minister Ghani steeped Metrinko and Peace Corps Director Vasquez in nostalgia from his years learning English and basketball with PCVs in Kabul
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What Walter Kirn gets wrong about fascist protests: their cliches and tropes are all too easy to spot. Violence, racism, hate, tiki-torches, and insurrection.
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Limbert’s poise, broadcast in Iran and around the world, leveraged Khamenei’s own culture into a polite message discrediting those holding the Americans captive
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Even after 5 months as a hostage John Limbert retained his identity as a diplomat, engaging Iran’s future Supreme Leader in language and custom Khamenei couldn’t ignore
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An author and former diplomat reflects on his hometown, his earliest career failure, and how Peace Corps helped him overcome it to tell America’s story abroad
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A brief pivot from Peace Corps profiles to pressing matters of climate change and opinion journalism.
Ben East Books 