Peter Hessler on the ironic merits of the Peace Corps

“Sometimes I thought of the Peace Corps as a reverse refugee organization, displacing all of us lost Midwesterners, and it was probably the only government entity that taught Americans to abandon key national characteristics. Pride, ambition, impatience, the instinct to control, the desire to accumulate, the missionary impulse — all of it slipped away.”
–Peter Hessler, Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West (2013)

Posted by | Comments (1)  | January 27, 2014
Category: Travel Quote of the Day


One Response to “Peter Hessler on the ironic merits of the Peace Corps”

  1. Stephen Says:

    Interesting perspective on Peace Corps, especially as a lot of non-PCVs seem to view it as a soft power political tool to aid American interests abroad! Hessler definitely offers consistently thoughtful reads, though.