Stunningly beautiful language, unlikable and unlikely characters, minimal plot.
This is a funny, electrical, no-bullshit tale by a wry and talented author. Terry Galloway navigates the waters that have drowned many a wannabe memoirist -- disability, sexual identity, and mental health among them -- with ease, evoking compassion but never pity. Whether she's describing the politics and hierarchies of Deaf culture (not to be confused with the world of the "little-d" deaf) or the challenges of appearing imperfect in the theater world, Galloway's observations are always spot-on and perfectly timed. If you like memoirs at all, read this one.
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and a Third World Adventure Changed My Life by Eve Brown-Waite
I’ve never before had “author vertigo” quite as badly as I did while reading First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria – my overall sensation was that of reading the memoirs of a gifted, passionate international-development worker, ghostwritten by her vacant twin sister. Throughout the book, it was impossible for me to reconcile the author’s careers as a rape-crisis counselor, policy analyst, and HIV-prevention pioneer with lines like “I was surprised by how thoroughly [the Peace Corps offices] investigate their applicants. I was VOLUNTEERING to go to some god-awful country, live in a shack, and dig latrines for world peace” (8).
Eve Brown-Waite demonstrates an expansive understanding of public health and its importance in the developing world, or at least occasional glimmers thereof, but she muffles it all with a forced, uncomfortably flip dumb-girl prose. The combination produces a few real gems: “On a continent where ten percent of all children died before their fifth birthday because of lack of access to basic medical care, I couldn’t possibly confess to having had our cats surgically sterilized” (96) – or, better yet, the cringe-worthy closing paragraph of the Author’s Note: “[This] book is funny, but malaria is not.” It’s hard to laugh, though, when Brown-Waite describes her decision to hire a housekeeper who is battling advanced AIDS: “Now this might have deterred some people from hiring Aisha, but I wasn’t going to let a little bit of show more AIDS – or a lot – stop me” (131). A few pages later, however, we learn that having a servant with late-stage AIDS isn’t all fun and games. “I could have asked Aisha to prepare our food, I suppose. After all, I knew I didn’t have to worry about contracting HIV in this way. But I was starting to get concerned about catching tuberculosis, which I was now pretty sure she also had” (137). Aisha disappears a few pages later; it turns out she has decided to take a different job, and we never hear about her again.
Should you read this book? If you’re considering a stint in the Peace Corps, the first 70 pages may offer you a nugget or two of useful advice. (Sample nugget: Many Peace Corps volunteers end up creating their own job placements; they arrive in their host countries, immediately discover that the agencies they’re placed with have no work for them, and start over from scratch.) Otherwise – unless you’re interested in lengthy treatises about the perfection of Brown-Waite’s husband, the smelliness of her Ugandan neighbors, and the cuteness of her cats – skip it. show less
Eve Brown-Waite demonstrates an expansive understanding of public health and its importance in the developing world, or at least occasional glimmers thereof, but she muffles it all with a forced, uncomfortably flip dumb-girl prose. The combination produces a few real gems: “On a continent where ten percent of all children died before their fifth birthday because of lack of access to basic medical care, I couldn’t possibly confess to having had our cats surgically sterilized” (96) – or, better yet, the cringe-worthy closing paragraph of the Author’s Note: “[This] book is funny, but malaria is not.” It’s hard to laugh, though, when Brown-Waite describes her decision to hire a housekeeper who is battling advanced AIDS: “Now this might have deterred some people from hiring Aisha, but I wasn’t going to let a little bit of show more AIDS – or a lot – stop me” (131). A few pages later, however, we learn that having a servant with late-stage AIDS isn’t all fun and games. “I could have asked Aisha to prepare our food, I suppose. After all, I knew I didn’t have to worry about contracting HIV in this way. But I was starting to get concerned about catching tuberculosis, which I was now pretty sure she also had” (137). Aisha disappears a few pages later; it turns out she has decided to take a different job, and we never hear about her again.
Should you read this book? If you’re considering a stint in the Peace Corps, the first 70 pages may offer you a nugget or two of useful advice. (Sample nugget: Many Peace Corps volunteers end up creating their own job placements; they arrive in their host countries, immediately discover that the agencies they’re placed with have no work for them, and start over from scratch.) Otherwise – unless you’re interested in lengthy treatises about the perfection of Brown-Waite’s husband, the smelliness of her Ugandan neighbors, and the cuteness of her cats – skip it. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Disappointingly dull. Claiborne is better in person.
Love Makes a Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Parents and Their Families by Peggy Gillespie
I know I was supposed to hate this book because, despite its smooth talk about family diversity, it didn't capture the diversity of queer parents at all. But it warmed my heart right up anyway.