Non-fiction and the Peace Corps Problem

I've finally gotten around to reading the essay that won The Missouri Review's Annual Editors' Prize. Since I'd also entered the contest, I admittedly read the essay with a more critical eye. Do I wish I'd won this contest? Yes. (The prize was $3,000. You wish you'd won, too.) Do I think that Erica Bleeg's essay "Obedience" deserved to win? Absolutely.

Bleeg's essay paints a startling portrait of a moment in time. She describes her training as a Peace Corps volunteer in the country of Benin. We're introduced to her first host family, the landscape of the country and of the city of Cotonou (where Bleeg is being trained), as well as to information about the history and culture of Benin. Bleeg does an excellent job of re-creating the sense of strangeness she encountered as a American in a foreign land: "All around us, humidity drenched the hours in a rich haze such that everything in view seemed temporary, like a mirage, while at the same time my awareness of every action as a means to stay alive became much keener" (95). Every sentence is meticulously constructed and rich in detail; Bleeg knows well how to take her time in telling a good story.

But. I can't help but put the essay down and think, Great. Another privileged, well-intentioned white girl goes to Africa and is confounded by the role of women there, and finds herself implicated in the process. And then she writes about it.

Perhaps I'm jealous because I haven't produced any writing from my AmeriCorps experiences, or because I haven't been published, or because I didn't attend as prestigious of a graduate writing program as Bleeg. (Though, to be fair, a woman from my program won TMR's Editors' Prize just a few years ago. Her essay was also about an experience she had in the Peace Corps.)

But I think I really am tired of reading this same essay. Because I haven't yet found a writer that really addresses, head-on, what I think is the most compelling issue to be found in such essays: white guilt. Or maybe not white guilt, but the kind of guilt that sends us out into the world to do this work, and then return and wear it as some kind of badge of honor. Because I don't believe in this work as being altruistic. Although, with very few exceptions, I simply don't believe in altruism. We do good things because we want something--an object, a feeling, a currency, a favor--in return. I joined AmeriCorps because I wanted to gain job experience without actually finding a real job, and because I wanted to move and AmeriCorps pays volunteers to relocate. Sure, I wanted to help the community as well. But would I have been as eager to help without the incentives of a few lines for my resume and a little money for my education?

To be fair, Bleeg touches on this issue in several places. She writes, "Having just arrived from a country torn by racial hatred and rife with racial epithets, whenever I heard [the term Beninois used to refer to white people], what I saw in my mirror eye, looking back at me, was a White Exploiter" (94). But what, I want to know, does she think of being a white exploiter? Or, does she even think she's white exploiter? How does she view the presence of the Peace Corps in countries such as Benin? What are the unique problems faced by volunteers who have so much history bearing down upon them?

Bleeg, though, attempts to immediately divert her readers' attention from such questions--she writes that she isn't sure if her presence helps, but that "there was nothing we could do to erase who we were" (94). Right enough, but if you've gone over to Africa as a white, American volunteer, isn't it your responsibility to begin teasing out and speculating upon some answers to those really large questions? Other readers may want to move on to the next sentence, but I want Bleeg to stop and explain.

But Bleeg also makes clear that her motive for joining the Peace Corps wasn't to tease out racial tensions and the impact of hundreds of years of exploitation. She tells us early on that she wanted to go to Africa because of what she knew of the poverty there. Television images of Africa--particularly of women--linger in Bleeg's memories of childhood. "It was women I wanted to understand. I wanted to help where possible; I wanted to deepen my life with hard labor, and I believed African women could show me how" (92).

Ok, I'll start by being snarky: no one wants to deepen their lives with hard labor. Go to any demanding job--find someone in construction, find someone working long hours in a field, find a fisherman or woman--go find someone in one of those jobs, and ask them: would they like a break? It is only those who can afford to be idle that romanticize hard labor.

My point: this sentence is a landmine in Bleeg's essay. She's so careful--her pages of prose about history and geography are, I think, a carefully traced path around other sentences like "I had grown up in a corporate family"(93). I wonder: how corporate? And I think that question is important. A woman traveling to Benin from an upper class family, for example, will have a wider gulf of differences to navigate than, say, someone traveling there from a poverty-stricken family. But, to keep our attention on the story she wants to tell (which is, ultimately, a story about her own inaction), Bleeg keeps details about her life to a minimum.

In the end, I think Bleeg wrote the wrong essay. She wrote the essay we've been taught to write since grade school: the "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" essay. She wrote the essay well, to be sure. But I can't help but wonder who much better it would have been if she'd written the essay "Who I Am And Why I Went On This Summer Vacation."