First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How A Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart And A Third World Adventure Changed My Life (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
Horrible. Boring. Really, that's the most fitting description for this book.What actually happens besides what the back flap tells you? She goes in to the Peace Corps lusting over a poorly made decision to sleep with her recruiter, comes home and nags him till they get married, they go to Uganda, she gets uppity on body odor, and they live happily ever after. Seriously. What was the point in this book? It didn't make me want to see Uganda. It turned me off to the Peace Corps and its questionable recruiting practices (just kidding). So, why did this deserve a book? First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria is a memoir broken into two parts based on two different third world country experiences of the author in Ecuador and Uganda. The book’s major themes of expatriate third world living and pursuit of love share one style: neurotic, flippant, prose. It seems that the author is trying to come off like a worldly, seasoned, female Jerry Seinfeld. But unlike Seinfeld which was a show about nothing, Brown-Waite’s context is about much that matters. And while she states in her introduction: “The book is funny, but malaria is not.”--the admission didn’t make it less distasteful and difficult to read humorous takes on everything from LRA takeovers to yes, malaria. I really wanted to like this book and I actually think I would like the author, because I didn't trust that the tone I found so troubling was actually who she was, it seemed like a gimmick. Not trusting an author makes for a bad read even if it was comforting to me that, ultimately, I never really believed she was that insensitive.
What do You think about First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How A Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart And A Third World Adventure Changed My Life (2009)?
Cute and funny at times. Shallow and what is not all that great about expats at others.
—Haley
My only complaint was that she ended every letter with "I'll keep you posted".
—edithvaldobinos
This is one of the funniest memoirs I have ever read...laugh out loud funny!
—Brella
Favorite quotes: "Oh my God! I shit a rat!" & "Oh my God, I shit on a rat!"
—hellhath^nofury
