Surviving Paradise One Year on a Disappearing Island

by Rudiak-Gould, Peter

• ISBN13: 9781402766640
• ISBN10: 1402766645
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-11-03
• Publisher: Union Square Press

Summary

Just one month after his 21st birthday, Peter Rudiak-Gould moved to Ujae, a remote atoll in the Marshall Islands located 70 miles from the nearest telephone, car, store, or tourist, and 2,000 miles from the closest continent. He spent the next year there, living among its 450 inhabitants and teaching English to its schoolchildren. At first blush,Surviving Paradiseis a thoughtful and laugh-out-loud hilarious documentation of Rudiak-Gould's efforts to cope with daily life on Ujae as his idealistic expectations of a tropical paradise confront harsh reality. But Rudiak-Gould goes beyond the personal, interweaving his own story with fascinating political, linguistic, and ecological digressions about the Marshall Islands. Most poignant are his observations of the noticeable effect of global warming on these tiny, low-lying islands and the threat rising water levels pose to their already precarious existence. AnEat, Pray, Loveas written by Paul Theroux,Surviving Paradiseis a disarmingly lighthearted narrative with a substantive emotional undercurrent.

Author Biography

PETER RUDIAK-GOULD is currently pursuing a doctorate in anthropology at Oxford, focusing on Marshallese understandings of global warming and sea level rise. In the summer of 2007, he interviewed the President of the Marshall Islands regarding the effects of climate change. Proficient in Marshallese, the native language of the Marshall Islands, he is the author of the language textbook used by the WorldTeach volunteer organization as its official language manual for the Marshall Islands program.

Table of Contents

A Note from the Author	p. xi
Prologue	p. 1
Moon Landing	p. 5
A Beautiful Prison	p. 9
The Marshall Islands on One Dollar a Day	p. 14
A Tropical Paradox	p. 17
Learning to Speak Again	p. 29
Underwater Coralhead Cinderblock Soccer Wrestling	p. 50
No Student Left Behind	p. 60
The Scent of New Things	p. 75
Gone Sailing	p. 91
It Takes a Village to Break a Spirit	p. 104
A Vacation from Paradise	p. 121
Confessions of a Spearfisherman	p. 148
From Island to Mainland	p. 163
On the Waterfront	p. 180
Liberation Days	p. 194
Getting Past Customs	p. 204
To Bring to an End	p. 219
Another Shore	p. 226
Epilogue: Fallen Palms	p. 229
Acknowledgments	p. 243
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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