Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island
Just one month after his twenty-first 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 2000 miles from the closest continent.He spent the next year there, living among its 450 inhabitants and teacing English to its schoolchildren. Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island, is a thoughtful and often 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.
Rudiak-Gould goes beyond a simple coming-of-age memoir and incorporates aspects of travel journalism, linguistic study, cultural and poitical history, and anthropological investigation in Surviving Paradise. Most poignant are his observations of the noticeable effect of global warming on the Marshall Islands. As one of the lowest lying places on Earth, Ujae will be among the first casualties of the rising oceans.
Surviving Paradise is a portrait of one island at the turn of the 21st century, and how it felt for one young man to live in this alien culture on a remote speck of land. Rudiak-Gould signed up for growth, adventure, and disillusionment on the ends of the earth. What he got was so much more, and his journey - engaging, surprising, and frequently moving - is well worth following.
Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island
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