travel

To Paula Huntley's students it's Kosova, not Kosovo, like we Americans like to call that little war-torn country. That's just one of the changes Huntley had to get used to when she began teaching English to a group of Kosovar Albanians. Transplanted from her comfortable San Francisco life to Prishtina, Kosovo, Huntley began keeping a journal to express her struggles and triumphs in her new surroundings. Two years later, that same journal would be published as a book destined to be a bestseller.

Paula Huntley is the epitome of a great teacher --- one who goes above and beyond the call of duty to help her students succeed. One of her noble feats is organizing an extracurricular reading group for her students known as the Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo. As her students read Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, the parallels between their lives and the life of the old man become increasingly evident to both Huntley and her students. Through their interaction, both Huntley and her students learn the lessons of perseverance, faith and hope.

THE HEMINGWAY BOOK CLUB OF KOSOVO offers much more than the typical memoir. Through Huntley's masterful writing and reflections, the reader experiences the horrors that her students lived through during the Serbian genocide of Kosovar Albanians. A timely reminder of what war does to a country, THE HEMINGWAY BOOK CLUB OF KOSOVO gives great insights into the injustices occurring throughout the world.

This book contains a myriad of emotions. It elicits laughter as Huntley and her students struggle to break down cultural and language barriers. It evokes tears as you read of the losses the Kosovars experienced. It makes you angry, fills you with hope and drowns you in sorrow --- all at the same time. But most of all, it makes you think about all of the things you take for granted that Paula Huntley's students only dream of.

--- Reviewed by Melissa Brown

Paula Huntley's remarkable journal of her eight months as a volunteer English teacher in Kosovo is that rare thing: A sympathetic, even loving look at the victims of war - in this case Kosovar Albanians - that does not at the same time demonize those in whose name the war was waged - in this case, the Serbs. Indeed, Huntley reminds us that racial, ethnic or national stereotyping, and the notions of collective guilt and collective innocence that accompany such stereotyping, is frequently at the heart of violence. In a journal entry that recounts her students' unwillingness to believe that any Albanian could have been responsible for the bus bombing that had just killed many Serbian civilians, Huntley comments, "Nor, I expect, do most Serbs believe that fellow Serbs could have committed atrocities in Bosnia or Kosovo."

Huntley's reminds us not only of our differences, but of our similarities, and of the common humanity that connects us to each other. Her deep belief in the power of human connection is the thread that winds throughout this lovely, moving book.

The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo is a wonderful tale of the virtues and rewards of volunteering to help those in countries less fortunate (at least for the present) than the US; at the same time, it's not exactly great literature or great writing. However, that's not what it's advertised to be, and it's not the aspiration of the author to compete with the writers of great literature. For how it came to be (a collection of emails to friends and family during the 8 months the author spent teaching English in Kosovo), this book more than meets its goal.
Paula Huntley went to Kosovo with her husband, who volunteered for an ABA project to help set up a new legal system for the new war-torn country. She took a crash course in teaching English as a second language and, once in Prishtina, Kossovo, quickly found a job teaching the language to a classroom of eager and charming Albanian students.
The book begins as Huntley's story but quickly evolves into being the story of the country and its inhabitants, specifically those who were blessed to be her students. Like volunteers everywhere, Huntley quickly learned that she was gaining and receiving far more than she was giving, in terms of compassion, understanding, insight, and personal growth.
It's not 'literature,' but it's sure a terrific little book. Don't miss it. I learned a whole, whole lot about a part of the world about which I have very little knowledge.