An Indian Among los Indígenas: A Native Travel Memoir

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.