The Quiet American by Graham Greene is an emotionally complicated anti-war novel exploring the dangers of being innocent and idealistic. Thomas Fowler is a reporter on the French war in Vietnam; despite being a seasoned and hardened journalist and insisting that he does not take sides, Fowler becomes knowingly involved in the death of Alden Pyle, a young American CIA agent who does not understand the complexities, dangers, and consequences of the time and place. Fowler’s good intentions to stop Pyle’s good intentions are further muddied by the fact that Pyle has stolen Fowler’s mistress, Phuong.

Greene’s style of writing is eminently readable, with realistic prose and fast-moving scenes of high tension and mystery. Many aspects of Fowler’s life correspond to Graham Greene’s: Greene worked as a war correspondent in French Indochina for two newspapers, from March 1951 to June 1955, he didn’t have a high opinion of the French, he had a longstanding relationship with a mistress, as well as with many prostitutes, he questioned the existence of God, and he had a wife whose Catholicism influenced her to deny him a divorce despite their long separation. While I am careful to separate author from narrator (correlation does not equal causation), it is clear that Greene’s life experiences influenced this work.

I have seen myself, as a spouse in a U.S. Foreign Service family, the effects of idealism in developing countries where an American’s desires, goals, and potential to influence are similar to those of Alden Pyle. The pursuit of a utopian ideal often supersedes taking the time to step out of one’s cultural frame of reference and examine what is best for the native people rather than enforce the imposition of high-minded principles—many of which simply do not translate to the local culture.

At the same time, having been—and perhaps still being—very idealistic myself, I recognize the fundamentally good desire to relieve suffering. How that is accomplished, however, and the dangers inherent in trying to exert control over another culture, is addressed magnificently in The Quiet American and is still a pertinent discussion for anyone volunteering for or wanting to contribute to a foreign country.


Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. New York: Penguin, 2004.

Suddenly there is an explosion—an accident, a bomb, a malfunction—and there are 50 people wounded, dead, or dying in the room with you. Some have lost limbs and are bleeding profusely, others have been knocked unconscious, others have been eviscerated and their intestines, looking like pink cauliflower, are hanging out of their stomachs. Some people near the windows have punctured lungs from the shattered glass, others have awful wild burns. One woman's eye has come out of her socket and is dangling on her cheek, and another man has a metal pipe lodged through his stomach.

You are fine or have minor injuries. What do you do? What do you do first?

This month I went to an all-day emergency medical training course at the U.S. Consulate here in Montreal. I learned what to do for these situations in a systematic way designed to save as many lives as possible. And frankly, it gave me much more confidence that during an emergency, I could actually help instead of standing there helplessly.

In the Foreign Service, you move a lot. And in most cases, it's extremely difficult and fraught with red tape, errors, and problems. This book is a collection of essays brought together by the Associates of the American Foreign Service Worldwide (AAFSW).

In "Look at That Fat White Baby!: Adjusting to a Developing Country," I share my experience of moving to the Marshall Islands with my husband (a first-tour Foreign Service officer) and our 9-month-old. The Marshall Islands is a group of atolls that lie roughly halfway between Hawaii and Papua New Guinea, and moving there was a wild and profoundly beautiful experience for me.

As the essay is listed first after the introduction, you can read a good portion of it via Amazon's "Look Inside" feature (Click on the image above for the link). The book contains other useful information about moving overseas (and back again) as well as experiences both tragic and entertaining.

AAFSW is a non-profit that "provides information, advocacy, social events, networking, crisis support, and more" to Foreign Service officers and their families. Proceeds from sales support this organization.

I tell you, 2013 has been a roller coaster. Nay, one of those gut-wrenching theme park rides that drops you suddenly and then shoots you up right into the sky. Like The Rocket at Lagoon, the theme park in Utah I frequented as a young'un.

Mid-January I was having a great time meandering around Kwajalein Atoll, visiting Marshallese students participating in The Unbound Bookmaker Project on Ebeye, and then flying to the remarkably remote and stunning tropical island of Pohnpei. That's when the Ride of Life dropped me. I got some sort of tropical fever; we still don't know what it was, except that I was exhibiting all signs of dengue fever or chikungunya (another mosquito-borne disease that means "that which bends up"; check it out). I felt like I was suddenly extremely arthritic in different joints of my body, and I had 103-degree temperature and chills for three days. And a sore throat, but that doesn't fit anything. My husband couldn't find any acetaminophen and we were loathe to go to the hospital because of what we heard (collapsing roof) and because of what we had experienced in Majuro's hospital (cockroach-killing contest, anyone?). The fever broke right before we went to Nan Madol, one of the strangest places I have ever been, which is saying something because the Marshall Islands are pretty strange. It was a phenomenally beautiful trip and one of the greatest experiences of my life. I was weak but very happy.

And then we went back to Majuro and I came down with food poisoning or some type of virus that left me clutching my gut, swaying back and forth through the midnight hours, and weeping for death. Not even joking.

Despite winning the Scrabble battle with the Ambassador last week (there will be a rematch, however, so I'm not crowing very loudly), several events occurred this weekend that made my faith in humanity tremble and almost collapse. The most saddening was the violence in the Maghreb and in other parts of the Middle East. As we are scheduled to serve in Tunis, Tunisia, for our next post as part of the Foreign Service, it was very scary to hear reports of billowing black clouds of smoke arising from the Embassy compound where my husband is scheduled to work. Worse, the rioters, who from an online video looked like bored hooligans with nothing better to do then tear down relationships and screw over their own environment, looted and then burned down the very international school that my son Maxwell would have attended for preschool. They even took the time to try to destroy the playground. The children were sent home only four hours earlier, and many of the children were not American at all. When you start going after kids and their schools, you lose the support of the entire world.

This new interactive interview I gave Ambassador Campbell before she retired from the Foreign Service is now complete and can be downloaded for free. The format of this textual/audio interview is unusual, but it demonstrates the concept of using more than one form of expression to communicate. I hope to do more of this in the future with other stories. I enjoyed working on this with Ambassador Campbell, and I thank Eric Johnson for his technical assistance and Casey Richards and Yuko Carey for the images.

You can download the free PDF from my Free Downloads page.

Update on Other Projects: the Undefining Woman compilation of essays from twelve Mormon women is in the process of being concatenated and will be sent off to some lucky publisher soon, as will my anti-joke/meta-joke book (details on my Portfolio page). I encourage you to follow this blog in order to be notified of publications and more freebies, as well as learn more about experimental literature.

We are still trying to find sponsors for 17 of the 23 new Marshallese children's books as part of The Unbound Bookmaker Project; if you know someone who is interested in supporting literacy and creativity in the Marshall Islands, please let them know about this project.

For those interested in seeing what life is like for us in the Foreign Service, please see my family blog.

by Jamie Zvirzdin

________ had soft eyes, a strong, brown body, multiple scars on her legs from scrapes and bug bites, a white t-shirt and some black shorts, and an easy smile. I met her at the LDS girls’ camp this year out in Ajeltake. She was animatedly telling a story, in Marshallese, to some other girls sitting around her. She told a story about a boy who was named “Niñniñ” (“Baby”). She laughed as she recounted that she hadn’t seen Niñniñ in many years and it was strange to see him grown up and still call him by his name. I asked her if she would tell me about her life. This is her story.

I am ________. I am 16 years old, and I am half Marshallese and half ________. My parents met at the local college on Majuro Atoll—he the teacher, she the student. My dad was also a gambler, and he and my mother split when I was 2 years old. I lived with my dad for most of my life in another Pacific country. My dad was like my best friend. He was sad when I said I wanted to live with my mom in the Marshall Islands, but he was going back to school and would be busy, so he let me go. My dad didn’t want me to live with my mom since he said she was struggling with 8 kids, had no life, and no education (she dropped out of college when she got pregnant. It happens a lot in the Marshall Islands).

My dad has 5 kids: 2 from my mother, 1 from another partner, 1 from another partner, and 1 from another partner.

My mom has 8 kids: 1 from one partner (my half-brother is now an LDS missionary), 2 from my father, 1 from another partner, 3 from another partner, and 1 adopted child from a relative that didn’t want her.

My dad had an interesting view of his partners: he wanted to take them, teach them, and make them turn out all right, but it didn’t work out as he planned. “All Marshallese women are stubborn,” he said. Two of his girlfriends were my babysitters growing up.

I used to hear from my aunties the stories about my mom’s abusive partners. Most of her boyfriends abused her. I heard the stories about my mom running away from them because they would beat her up.

Kids in the Marshall Islands are easily influenced, especially by their parents. Kids get really depressed when parents split. One of my friends used to be really bubbly, but she turned from bubbly to a hag or a dog when her parents split. We tried helping her—tried getting her to talk about it. She started using drugs and drinking. She liked cigarettes, weed, and Tamiroff Vodka. She got a lot of it from Chinese stores on Majuro, until they made you have an ID. That was just a year ago.

My dad was protective of me. He wouldn’t let me date. I tried alcohol when I was 14, but I didn’t like it. I told my dad that I did it because of my friends. I thought it was strange when he asked his Jamaican friends to bring him liquor-filled chocolates for my 16th birthday. I didn’t want them, so he gave them away to a cousin who’s drunk all the time.

I lived on Jaluit Atoll for a summer. One of my friends was very frightened of her dad. He gets a weapon and threatens his girlfriend, and the kids watch the whole thing. He gets angry easily. No one can stop him because he’s drunk.

Other kids drink with their parents. They let them do it. Parents don’t give babies alcohol (of course!). Mothers often don’t seem to care about what their daughters do, because they’re still growing up themselves.

There’s a Facebook page called “You Know You’re Marshallese When . . .” I think it’s funny. You know you’re Marshallese when you and your family live in the living room and the private rooms are for . . . well, you know. Girls don’t know what to do when it comes to that stuff. It’s not taught in school, and it’s not taught at home. But they watch things in the media, and they think that’s what modern girls do, and then they try it and think it’s fun. They want popularity and attention. I have about 10 close friends who have gotten pregnant—my cousin, 2 friends in Jaluit, 1 in America (in Arkansas, where there are a lot of Marshallese people), my 18-year-old nephew, my classmate, and some other friends.

We have a word in Marshallese--ļōñ—that means “men lust.” It’s like they just want to have fun but they’re not aware of the girl getting pregnant. Guys with ļōñ think they know everything. One girl for a Marshallese guy won’t be enough.

I heard a lot of my friends promise each other that they weren’t going to get pregnant. When I ask them what happened to that promise, they say things like, “We were young.” I tell them, “You’re still young.” All of them have dropped out of school except my cousin, because the baby stays with his dad. The father goes to work at the Tyson chicken factory. Lots of Marshallese work at the Tyson chicken factory. They peel off the chicken skin and feathers. It’s their only way of living in America.

Parents aren’t strict enough and don’t give their kids any advice, but the kids are arrogant and don’t want to listen anyway. Children will suffer and parents will have to pay for it. They pay because when they’re grandparents they work more hours to buy things like diapers for their grandchildren. Parents have to be truthful to each other—even though it’s too late.