An Indian Among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir

by Ursula Pike

When she was twenty-five, Ursula Pike boarded a plane to Bolivia and began her two years of service in the Peace Corps. A member of the Karuk Tribe, Pike sought to make meaningful connections with Indigenous people halfway around the world. But she arrived in La Paz with trepidation as well as excitement, “knowing I followed in the footsteps of Western colonizers and missionaries who had also claimed they were there to help.” In the following two years, as a series of dramatic episodes brought that tension to boiling point, she began to ask: what does it mean to have experienced the effects of colonialism firsthand, and yet to risk becoming a colonizing force in turn?

An Indian among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir, upends a canon of travel memoirs that has historically been dominated by white writers. It is a sharp, honest, and unnerving examination of the shadows that colonial history casts over even the most well-intentioned attempts at cross-cultural aid. It is also the debut of an exceptionally astute writer with a mastery of deadpan wit. It signals a shift in travel writing that is long overdue.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel, Indigenous, Biography Memoir, Womens, Bolivia

233 pages, Hardcover

First published April 6, 2021

About the author

Ursula writes about identity, Native American issues, economics, travel, and powwows. She has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a master’s degree in Economics from Western Illinois University. She is a member of the Karuk Tribe. Ursula lives in Austin, Texas, but returns to Portland, Oregon, and stands anywhere that provides a view of Mt. Hood, as frequently as possible.

Reviews

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m so shocked seeing some of the base arguments for the lower reviews for this book that I decided to contribute. I am Peruvian (not Indigenous) and chose to read this book in an effort to travel by word, and hear from someone else’s experience in institutional jobs. Unlike the lower reviews which seem disappointed in the peace corps impression, I for one have no sympathies for programs like this. I really related to the feelings of isolation Ursula experienced amid a group of white folks trying to do some saviorism. I think this is a great critique of such programs as well as an original account of how these opportunities go for marginalized folks. I was glad to see how the author hopes that more BIPOC publish their experiences in these programs or other institutional endeavors. I enjoyed the personal shares and vivid depictions of how difficult these abroad experiences can be. I am glad also that this book addresses the topic of connection and gaining trust from another Indigenous community, which takes time and needs to be intentional. I am trying to reconnect with my own Quechua lineage and this book was also a way to learn about what if I also went on experience like this, what kind of impact would I really have as someone with USian (citizenship) privilege, and the backing and financial support of this kind of program. I am grateful for being able to read this.

[gwayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as perspectives go, this one is unique: A middle-aged Native American woman looks back on her trip to Bolivia in her mid-twenties as part of the Peace Corps. Her experience was always going to be different from those of her white peers: she goes into it eyes wide open, already weighing her criticisms of the Peace Corps' colonialist cultural condescension against her very American desire to empower third-world communities. She is surprised to learn, however, that in Bolivians' eyes her brown skin and Native roots are invisible in the face of her privileged Americanness. Herself a bit lost—depressed, insecure—she comes to realize that she is perhaps more helped by than helpful to the Bolivian people, indigenous woman in particular, she meets. I loved learning more about Bolivia through such a self-aware and sensitive cultural lens.

This memoir is subtle and earnest and honest—to the point of unflattering in places when the author shares a few questionable decisions that might have been cut from the story by a less honest chronicler. For me, however, they underscored the author's vulnerability and, perhaps ironically, increased her credibility. I honor her courage in laying bare the details of this confusing, lonely, complicated, and life-changing experience. And as a reader I found this story and perspective thought-provoking and valuable.

[Danika at The Lesbrary]

I discuss this on April 6th's All the Books episode! Here are two quotations that stuck out to me:

"My identity was a tailless donkey they had to pin the right kind of brown."

"I was ashamed of everything that I did and said. I wished I had stayed in my room tonight and every night so as not to embarrass myself. I hated feeling that way. Yet I also loved the world and people. I didn’t know how to be in the world and not feel ashamed."

[Nik Maack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remember when you were in your 20s and did stupid things and were naive and lost and confused? But you were also overly confident and wild and drank too much and made bad choices? This book perfectly captures those feelings and that time of life. It also describes what it means to join the Peace Corps and travel to another country, with all the baggage of thinking you're going to "save" people with what you know. And what you know, really, isn't much.

I am obsessed with Bolivia. For this reason, I follow a lot of Bolivian people and news sources on Twitter. As soon as this book came up in a tweet, I knew I had to read it. What a fascinating take on Bolivia and Bolivian culture.

A native American (the author) joins the Peace Corps and travels to Bolivia to work with the indigenous people there in the 90s. Her perspective is sincere, brutally honest, and clearly written. It was a pleasure to read it.

I found the author on Twitter and followed her. I look forward to telling her how much I loved her book.

Obviously, I highly eecommend this book.

[KKEC Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published: April 6, 2021
Heyday
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ursula Pike is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work won the 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest in the memoir category, and her writing has appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, World Literature Today, and Ligeia Magazine. She has an MA in economics with a focus on community economic development and was a Peace Corps fellow at Western Illinois University. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia from 1994 to 1996. An enrolled member of the Karuk Tribe, she was born in California and grew up in Daly City, California, and Portland, Oregon. She currently lives in Austin, Texas.

“But I didn’t realize that helping people is difficult.”

Ursula Pike joined the Peace Corps wanting to make a difference. She wanted to find a way to do some good in the world. She wanted to find value in being a Native woman, and she wanted to connect with other Native people.

This memoir is about the journey Ursula had while in Bolivia. It is beautiful, heartbreaking, life-changing, and raw. The absolute vulnerable truths Ursula shares are so beautifully written. Her time in Bolivia is filled with many adventures.

The lessons learned were so incredibly vast and deep. And her time there changed her. It changed how she thought, how she saw things, how she felt about things. And mostly, it changed how she saw and felt about herself.

This is such a beautiful story about a young Native woman discovering the absolute beauty in her skin. Her culture. Her people. And her place in the world.

I love that Ursula has kept in touch with some of the friends she made while in Bolivia. And I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to share this journey with her. Everything about this book is worthwhile.

Prepare yourself; you’re about to take an emotional journey. The growth, the lessons, and the absolute love contained in these pages is pure magic.

[liv · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was v well written and i really felt like i was standing in her shoes. i expected to hear more about what exactly she did as a person in the peace corp but there were only a few small projects that she did which surprised me alot ! ive never read a book about bolivia before but this book opened my eyes to a whole other part of the world i truly don't think or hear about often, so i liked that

i think the author is very self aware and i liked that too. there were alot of moments where i was cringing but then i was like whoa this is actually brutally fucking honest like you'd have to waterboard this info out of me let alone publish it but i loved the rawness of that. even tho the affair part was annoying tf out of me it was Very honest of her....

identity is weird cultural identity is weird trying to figure out Who You Are as a mixed ethincity/race woman is weird! and i relate!

[Patrick Henry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I happened to come across this book's cover with a Bolivian woman in traditional dress. This was very familiar to me because of living in the Andes for nearly eight years. This is a memoir, alright, and Ms. Pike tells of her struggle to feel adequate to the task of serving other native people in their culture. She is an American native and somehow expects to be welcomed by the indigenas folks as one of their own. That premise is even in the book's title.

I remember people from wealthy countries who came to Bolivia wearing dirty and torn clothing. The Bolivians saw right through the fake inculturation with comments like, "I wish I had the dollars that were stuffed in those pockets of those ripped jeans". What was Ms. Pike thinking? She was a protected citizen of the USA gifted with the abundance of American life. The Peace Corps sufficiently supported her with health care and a monthly stipend that surpasses anything a working Bolivian family would ever know. She could never be accepted as "one of them".

I was impressed how the author detailed her self doubt and even the purpose of her assignment. She told of living in another culture where customs, history and language are so "foreign". For others like her, they find how this leads to soul-searching; it is a natural progression. One often asks, "Why am I here?" "Couldn't they have sent someone better at this?"

The sending agency is the Peace Corps. The author brings up how "her people" in the American West continue to be oppressed by government agencies in the US. She doesn't acknowledge that she herself was then part of the US Government working with native people. And at this, Ms. Pike fails miserably.

Maybe the Peace Corps didn't explain the mission well. Ms. obsessed over whether her economic project at the orphanage was really significant. Whatever small contribution Ms Pike would make to the economy of this very poor country was not the purpose of a brief 2-year stay. On the contrary, the point is to live among Bolivian people to witness the best of our north american country, to bond with Bolivian families and to ingest the enduring values rooted in another culture.

The most disturbing part of her revealing memoir was Ms. Pike's affair with a married man. She recognized how she was betraying her neighbor. She was willing to carry on even if it meant she would be content to be a home wrecker at the end of her two-year stay.

Frankly, I was dismayed at the accounts she gave of the other volunteers' sexual coupling with Bolivians. Weren't they aware that they would be lonely and have to deal with it? Wasn't that part of being overseas and away from home? Were they not dedicating themselves to living honorably among those they were serving? In some instances, the story read like Animal House.

Ursula Pike gets high marks for candor. She also details the inner questioning that makes a volunteer so vulnerable in a place so away from life in the States. Best to have dropped the Indian to Indian mystique that never happened. As years have passed, I hope she can see the betrayal of her ideals. Maybe she won't be so critical the failures government serving native populations in the US because her own human failures that so stained when she was called to serve.

[Jifu · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was so much to be enjoyed in this memoir that I enthusiastically consumed within the span of two days. I greatly admired the complete raw honesty with which Pike recounts her two years in Bolivia, and her willingness to share the lowest of low moments and deepest embarrassments along with all her other memories. I was also thankful for being made aware of just how little I knew about Bolivia and its majority indigenous population while simultaneously having that knowledge gap be rapidly filled by a decent abundance of information that provided a newfound base of understanding.

However, what I think I appreciated most of all was just how as someone who likewise lived and worked two years abroad in another country, I was able to identify with Pike a surprising amount. Of course, there are many differences between the two of us and our respectively experiences that differ immensely, including and not at all limited to 1.) the specific land and culture that I was immersed in, 2.) the kind of program that placed me there, 3.) the kind of work performed thousands of miles from my home, and of course 4.) my own lifelong personal context that I inhabited before transplanting myself abroad (middle class white kid from New England to make a long story short).

But even with these dissimilarities, I still found myself spoken to while reading about the author's time abroad. I was reminded of my own embarrassments and clumsy adjustments that were absolutely unavoidable despite my best efforts. I also was able to recall how I needed to repeatedly learn and re-learn need for humility and local connections. Also, last but not least I remember the plenty of times spent painfully trying to figure out what "success" from my then-ongoing experiences were even supposed to look like, and very frequently wrestling on an existential level what I was even doing on the other side of the planet in the very first place - whether I was there for good reasons, entirely selfish reasons, or a more complex answer that I hadn't figured out yet.

This is a definite recommend - especially if you did any kind of "service"(a word I am defining a bit broadly here) abroad for any amount of time. For as Pike has showed me in these pages, it seems there are quite a few core aspects of these experiences that are a lot more widely shared than many of us may realize.

[Alejandra Ruiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most stunning and important memoirs I’ve read. For anyone and everyone. Pike recounts her time in Bolivia through the Peace Corps as a Native American woman from the U.S.
Her attempt to connect to indigenous people (as not a typical white volunteer) in Bolivia is suddenly shaken. The privilege she holds upon her arrival to Bolivia adds a new dynamic to her identity that makes her hyper aware of how much bigger the differences are from the people she was trying to connect with— from language to basic chores, she realizes she needs more help from them to get through her program. Pike really challenges what it means to partake in charity work and exactly who benefits from colonialism painted as volunteer work. Who are we as US Americans to come into communities around the world and tell them how things should be done to “help” them? Stunning, raw and very memorable. A quick but tremendous read I recommend to everyone.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book more. I kept waiting for some insight about her experiences, but it was more about the men she encountered.

[Allie Scac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jarringly reminded me of my own service experiences, in Panama and Ecuador. How volunteering makes us feel good, like a pat on the back. How kind we are! How good of us to give up our time to help those with less.
Not withstanding the considerable expense it takes to house us and welcome us into their community, unreservedly I might add. It reminds me of a connection I had made with someone from Ecuador who had little to his name, yet was desperate to leave me with a memento. He gifted me something more precious than I could have given; a treasured token I was shocked he would part with. Often times I found myself in awe at the generosity and kindness shown by the people I was supposed to be helping. Who was really helping who here? Who was being changed? Perhaps that is part of it; the volunteer experiencing a world different to their own. Changing perspectives, bringing home with them a deeper sense of a shared human connection and an awakening sense of the dignity of all humankind. Humanity at the end of the day, is all about connections. About truly seeing each other. I also resonated with the authors conflicted sense of identity. Volunteering in Ecuador felt different to me because of my shared roots, yet no one could tell I had an even remotely shared culture there. To everyone, I was the gringa. I respect that the author wrote honestly and bluntly about herself and her experiences there. A genuine story about a woman struggling to find herself, and navigating life in the Peace Corps in Bolivia. A poignant reflection.

[Judith Kenyon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This heartfelt and intriguing story of an episode in Ursala's life completely changed her outlook on the Peace Corps, an organization she previously thought would give her a way to "help" indigenous people living in Bolivia. I saw how her original ideas of helping changed as she came to know the women of the area and advocated for the projects they wanted instead of projects she initially thought would be helpful. It was honest of her to include some of the behaviors that might make her appear less perfect, but they did reveal her vulnerability. I am so happy that Ursula Pike decided to limit this memoir to one pivotal time in her life instead of trying to go through several years. Looking back, I had the privilege of reading very early chapters that would have made the book a bit long, less focused, and less powerful. I recommend this book to everyone, especially young people about to join organizations like the Peace Corps.

[Michael Frost · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this, & think others will too. I think what stood out the most to me was the humbleness & self-awareness-- I found I really enjoyed & could relate to somebody just trying to figure out what the hell they were doing in a foreign place, as opposed to, say, someone jaunting over, building a bunch of new schools... & ending up being full of poop in the end. There are enough Avatar-like books about white people saving the "3rd World" & pretending to learn something from it. This is not that, and that is a good thing.

I also enjoyed/appreciated the insight into the complexity of Pike's "Native Americanness"... similar to the characters in "There There," it paints a picture of an American & an Indian "off the reservation" that some (non-native) people are unable or unwilling to see. This will help open your eyes, as it did mine

[Victoria Wlosok]

this was an insightful and interesting memoir about ursula pike's experience volunteering in bolivia through the peace corps! i read it as part of my BUSI 611: International Development class at UNC kenan-flagler and found it solidified my understanding of concepts we've been discussing in the course, especially as it relates to the challenges surrounding the economic development of third world countries. it was also wonderful to have ursula pike come in and speak to our class about the book—definitely a memoir that i'm thankful i read, and one that brims with detail, humor, and heart.

[Mariel Boldis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A much needed perspective in the world of helping and providing service in the world. We need more native voices in these spaces and I love how the author explored the way she occupied spaces in many ways and the complex interaction of these feelings.

[Charlott · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5

[Randa Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

a valuable book about an Indigenous woman’s experience in the peace corps. important for me on a personal level, and also important as it opens up opportunities for BIPOC to write and publish their experiences with the organization (this is Pike’s hope as she says in the final pages of the book).

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a lot of themes here to consider and dig into, including the meaning of charity work, what does "help" mean in doing work for communities, US colonialism & imperialism, imposter syndrome, mental health, whiteness, relationships, privilege, and the dynamics of money & power. It's got SO many good lines, too!

[Pai Siri Pal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m giving 4 stars because I thought her writing was good and it was a decent story. Having been a PCV myself, I identified with many things, but what I didn’t like was that she hadn’t a clue how to mobilize a community. She thought she had to save them vs strengthen any skills. She didn’t reach to even think of small projects that could’ve been very successful. And selfishly, she shamed herself by having an affair with a married man, drank way to much, and really, didn’t show a great example like a PCV should in many ways. If you give a little, most in a small community will love you, which is what she did.

[Nam · Rating 3 out of 5]

i feel like as far as peace corps memoirs go, i really appreciated this one for certain elements. that being said, the author does a good job talking about her experiences as an indigenous woman but it’s clear she lacks moral agency. she makes questionable decisions (COUGH COUGH SPOILER: HAS AN AFFAIR W A MARRIED MAN) and it made it really hard to empathize with her because she doesn’t acknowledge the harm she is doing.

i did learn a lot though but i wish she focused more on the children and women she was uplifting than the men she met that validated her. those needs are real but i don’t think the point of the peace corps is to find love and cure your insecurities.

[Allyson Ferrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pike's travel memoir is very different than any other books I've read in the genre. She did a masterful job of confronting some of the issues with organizations like the Peace Corps and the charity model. Reading about her time in Bolivia as a Peace Corps volunteer and challenging some of her own inherent biases of being an indigenous woman living in the U.S. was really interesting. Definitely recommend this if you are interested in development or travel memoirs.

[Emile · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grabbed this because I was interested in the author's more complicated & critical take on the peace corps experience, especially since I grew up in the same general area as them (Northern California and Oregon), as did my dad who also joined the peace corp in roughly the same time period.

Fascinating read.

[Davis Felton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for class: not my cup of tea, didn’t really like the romance portion in the middle, would’ve liked to hear more about work with Peace Corps

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m perhaps biased as a fellow Karuk, but I loved Pike’s memoir. It contributes to the emerging area of Native travel literature and explores commonly discussed facets of Native identities in a fresh way. Pike shows her own experience navigating the Peace Corps’ fundamental white savior complex and how it is inextricably intertwined with neoliberalism, colonialism, and imperialism. Her experiences lead her to what I understood to be a solidly Karuk conclusion: “The best help we [Peace Corps] could give them [Bolivians] was the same we could give to a community in the US, which was to ask what they needed and really listen to their answer” (218).

My interpretation of this, combined with her reflections on intertribal spaces and community development in the AmeriCorps, is that we all have a place and roles in community. Particularly, when Karuk peoples’ doings are rooted from Katamiin, and spiral out from that Center into the world, we bring with us the responsibility of World Renewal. This work must decolonize as well as acknowledge how our own positionalities both within and between Tribal communities are diverse, and yet all of those experiences come from and contribute to uniquely Native knowledge production. This memoir must be read from a contextualized understanding of how every Native community and family’s experiences with colonization have resulted in particular manifestations of intergenerational trauma and cultural rupture. In particular, Pike highlights the need to understand the why and how of unpacking, processing, and rejecting imposed colonial worldviews and values. In fact, I found this memoir so effective and thought provoking that I have taught it in my Native literatures classes at university.

Pike’s work explores themes of Native identity that lend themselves well to hemispheric considerations. In addition, this memoir can be paired with literature that provides further context on major themes in a way that is conducive to emergent curricular units. For example, I have used the text to help students explore: colonization in NW California and Bolivia; urban and rural Indian identities; Native language (reclamation) in California and Bolivia; Indigenous feminisms; storytelling and oral traditions; Indigenous music and performance studies; and Indigenous concepts of “place” that go beyond surface level/stereotypical analyses of spiritual connections to “mother earth.”

There are some chapters that should have content warnings for students. Chapter 12 includes a graphic depiction of a suicide attempt. It’s crucial not to skip over this, as it is deeply relevant to a very real pain within Native communities. However, if a student chooses to skip that chapter, it will not impact their ability to follow the story. I would recommend pairing this chapter with something that specifically addresses how Native communities create cultural programs to provide support to those with depression. Doing so brings some balance, hope, and decompression with such a heavy chapter. And Pike, we are so glad you are here.

[Litsplaining]

Review includes mentions of su1cid3, depression, and drug use.

I'm on a quest to find female travelogues that don't center around looking for companionship. Pike's narrative was one I was looking forward to because it came from a perspective I'd never seen in the travel memoir genre, which is the Indigenous perspective and a returning Peace Corps volunteer.

With this in mind, I went in excited to read a story full of Pike's adventures in Bolivia and was excited up until the last third of the story. Having Pike go from searching for a viable Peace Corp volunteer project to becoming depressed and actively attempting su1cd3 because she's lonely then jumping into her being a willing participant in an affair was a large leap. Not because the first two things are so outlandish, but because Pike seems to gloss overall things (e.g., casual cocaine use by Peace Corp volunteers at a party and her decision to never use the drug after the first time and then her suicide) I as a reader wanted to hear more exploration behind and instead focuses on her relationship with a married man. For example, I wanted to know how Pike felt about the fact that so many of her fellow white Peace Corps volunteers, like her long time friend, Daniel, come on their trips and are lauded for their work and efforts while she struggled mentally, emotionally, and professionally to find a way to fit into a community that she was so sure would accept her because she was Indigenous too. I kept waiting for Pike to draw a solid conclusion between her work and Daniel's celebrated work, but it never came.

Instead, there was extensive mention about her dating life and her desire to fill the void with anyone. Based on her casual mention of how the other participants also frequently dated and hooked up with Bolivians during their tenure with Peace Corps, I did wish Pike delved more into the power imbalance here if she was going to spend so much time on the relationship aspect of her volunteer time. I especially felt this way since for most of her relationship with Fernando, it appeared from her retelling as if he was trying to win her affection only to possibly get a Green Card and a one way trip to American since he knew she was leaving. This observation and casual mention by his wife about if Fernando was leaving with her when she confronts Pike along with the disjointed nature of the relationship in the ending section makes me curious if her editors decided that Pike’s Peace Corp experience wasn’t interesting enough and made her mine the relationship with Fernando as a climatic moment in her two year journey in Bolivia.

In the end, I really wish this relationship hadn’t been so centered in Pike's narrative because her story and the interactions she had with the Bolivians, especially the Chulita community, was so much more interesting than her pining for a married man for that last chunk of the book.

[T.J. Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25

"An Indian Among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir" is a powerful, thoughtful, vulnerable memoir about Ursula Pike's experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia in the 1990s. A member of the Karuk tribe of California, Pike was eager to engage and connect with the different indigenous groups in Bolivia, feeling like they would have a lot in common, but the dynamic was much more complex and nuanced than she expected. In Bolivia, Pike was a "gringa" with wealth and privileges that her friends and colleagues didn't have.

Pike wrote the memoir recently, looking back more than twenty years, and that adds an interesting layer as well. I found myself wishing for a similar memoir, with Pike's wonderful self-awareness and thoughtfulness, but from a more recent period. I am curious about how changes like the internet and cell phones have impacted Peace Corps service.

This is a very frank and sensitive memoir. Pike doesn't shy away from telling hard truths about herself or about the Peace Corps and its brand of high-toned saviorism. Pike was often floundering during her two years of service - feeling uncertain, worthless, and lonely. I see complaints in other reviews about the amount of time she spends recounting an affair she had with a married Bolivian man, and it does take up a fair chunk of the last 50% of the memoir, but it didn't bother me too much. I found Pike's openness refreshing.

This memoir paired really well with the book "Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel." I read them back-t0-back, and they both deal thoughtfully with issues of racism and colonialism while traveling. I enjoyed learning a little bit about Bolivian culture, but I would like to read something by a native Bolivian next.

I would definitely recommend "An Indian Among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir" to any readers who enjoy memoir, learning about other cultures, or who have ever had an interest in or experiences in the Peace Corps. It is a shame that this memoir has so few reviews; it should definitely be better known!

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-fiction + Bolivia setting + Peace Corps!

Ursula, at just twenty-five years old, heads to Bolivia for two years in the Peace Corps. As an Indigenous woman working alongside Indigenous people in a small town, she is forced to reckon with the effects of colonization and becoming the colonizer.

Read if you love...
✨non-fiction / memoirs
✨learning about another country, culture, traditions, and more
✨questioning your own opinions on doing any kind of "good work" in another country

I went into this one expecting to love it because I love a good travel memoir, the Peace Corps aspect fascinated me, and I've spent a month in Bolivia.

What I wasn't expecting was so many flashbacks to not only my time specifically in Bolivia, but to the eleven month mission trip (that I 100% no longer agree with) I did a decade ago. There was a section of the book where Ursula specifically talked about the white savior complex and it was such a gut punch because that's exactly what so many mission trips are, and part of what she had to reckon with when it comes to the Peace Corps (and part of what I eventually had to reckon with after returning home).

I really loved this one! Ursula's writing was a joy to read and really pulled me right into her life and the small Bolivian town she spent two years in. I loved learning not only about the work she did, but the friendships she made and the lessons she learned.

Another thing I really appreciated, which she talked about in the afterword, is that she changed the names of everyone in the book and the name of the small town she was in. It was important her to give them complete anonymity.

If you love travel memoirs, I absolutely recommend this one!

📍Bolivia
✨Representation: Indigenous author
‼️Content: suicide attempt (graphic and on page); suicidal thoughts; infidelity; racism; misogyny; addiction; alcoholism; rape

[Eduardo Santiago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Possibly the most self-aware content I’ve read this year. This is not a look-at-me humblebrag; it’s a morally conflicted and often painful reflection from a mature, wise, and thoughtful fifty-something woman. And it’s exquisite.

Pike does not sugarcoat her two Peace Corps years in Bolivia. From the very start she describes her youthful naïveté as she set off to “help” those poor South Americans; her desire to be seen as special because of her American Indian heritage; her inner conflicts, struggles, good decisions and shitty ones. Much of the book is cringe-inducing, in the sense of: could I lay bare my juvenile weaknesses and idiocies so frankly? So many I don’t want to admit even to myself? (Spoiler: hell no). But Pike doesn’t write for pity or admiration or scorn: she’s simply honest. About who she was, about what she experienced and did, who she met, about the complicated morality of the Peace Corps itself. Especially noteworthy to me was her awareness of her status as both minority and privileged, and how they interweave in confusing ways; that’s a question I’ve carried all my adult life and I too have having abused my privilege and regretted it. May we all learn to act better.

The book was nothing like I expected. It went interesting places (physical and metaphysical). It was above all insightful: Pike kept a journal while in Bolivia, but wrote the book much later as a different person. A wiser one. The book would (probably) not have been worth reading had she written it then. Today, it’s a gem.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

(i don't usually try to list trigger / content warnings for books because i don't try to remember a comprehensive list while reading, but i would like to note that this one includes a detailed depiction of a suicide attempt!)

The whole experience of an American going abroad, expecting one thing but finding another, is familiar ground - but this book feels very different in terms of what the expectation and the things found are. I really appreciate Pike's decision to include a lot of bad decisions and despairing feelings and not edit them out; you really feel the isolation and low self worth of being far from your people and thinking you should be Making A Difference even though you're really just trying to keep your clothes clean and get through the exhaustion of speaking your second or third language all day. Her observations of cultural similarities and differences in how indigenous people navigate a colonized world are interspersed with stories of getting drunk and crushing on the wrong guy, and she turns as much anthropological scrutiny on the other peace corps volunteers as on the locals. It's not exactly a critique of the Peace Corps, or a straight travelogue, but a story about humans living and working together that falls somewhere in the middle.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading the first chapter, I wasn’t going to finish this book. The author seemed irredeemably naïve and self-absorbed.

The following chapters were hardly any better. Pike agonized over her insecurities and simple interactions with locals. A lot of time was spent in the author’s head and little time was spent chronicling her required volunteer duties. I was disappointed. Wasn’t she there to serve the people?

Around halfway through, I softened to this woman’s story. Pike is unabashedly candid here. She is in fact not naïve, but very self-aware. Even though she executes some incredibly bad choices, she is not ignorant of her motivations, and she never rationalizes or minimizes the impact of her actions.

It turns out that An Indian among Los Indigenas isn’t a physical journey, but an emotional one. Throughout, Pike examines the issues of exploitation, cultural appropriation, cultural and racial bias/fetishization, economic privilege, and acculturation. Additionally, Pike acknowledges her role in perpetuating some of these indignities onto her Bolivian friends. This admission took a great deal of courage and insight.

In the end, I am pleased to have read this memoir. Although the stories revealed about the volunteers don’t inspire much confidence in Peace Corps!