Eating With The Enemy: How I Waged Peace With North Korea From My BBQ Shack in Hackensack / by Robert Egan and Kurt Pitzer

"I just called them up." (p. 12)

.

Robert Egan began life unextraordinarily enough. Raised in a "mobbed-up" working class part of northern New Jersey, he dropped out of high school in the mid-1970's, spent a few years working construction, building roofs and getting by with various odd jobs. One thing which had always interested him was war, the Vietnam War especially (Egan had intended to sign up as soon as he was old enough, but the war ended before then) and the detainment of American POW's after the war was over. After hanging out at a few local POW/MIA gatherings, in which participants staged protests, and perceiving that very little was actually being done, Egan decided to get in touch with those responsible for still detaining hostages. So, one day, he called the Vietnamese delegates at the UN (Vietnam had no direct diplomatic relations with the US at the time) and began an informal relationship.

.

The Vietnamese, thinking him a plant by the American secret service, reciprocated Egan's outreach and modestly accommodated his unsolicited, non-tactical approach (Egan kept quiet about the POW's for a time). Before long, the two parties were on genuinely friendly terms, several of the delegates even frequenting Egan's newly opened Bar-B-Que stand in Hackensack where the relationship gradually built into something of a purely deformalized spot for discrete political talks. The following years went smoothly between Egan and his friendly patrons, and one day, in the early nineties, he was introduced to several North Korean officials who were in a mood to improve their country's relations with the US. An obliging Egan was soon introduced to the country's UN ambassador, Han Song Ryol, and over the next few years the two would remain in close contact, exchanging information and steadily relaying it to their requisite parties--Egan (now an informant for the FBI) to the Americans and Han to the North Koreans.

.

Things remained on a virtuously casual basis with Egan actually chaperoning the visiting North Korean athetes during the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, and being inolved on a uniquely intimate level with the controversial nation until the government politely intervened, putting a stop to the friendship between "Pyongyong Bobby" Egan and Han. This story is as implausible, inconceivable and thoroughly unconventional as it gets. And yet it's all true. And it's more than just a really, really wierd story. Egan's ability to engage in foreign policy at a grass roots level and establish communication with an enemy nation is a remarkable fable on the effectiveness one individual can have. (B EGAN)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao / Junot Diaz

Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (call #: FIC DIAZ) is the nominally the coming-of-age story of Oscar, a nerdy sci-fi/gaming aficionado who lives with his mother and sister in Patterson, New Jersey. Oscar talks like a character from a book, spends most of his time involved in role-playing fantasy games and writing space opera books, and, despite all his painful yearnings, he never, never gets the girl.

Casting a shadow over Oscar's story is the legacy of the family's fuku -- or family curse -- that may or may not have followed his mother all the way to America from Santo Domingo. The author uses Oscar's story as an entry-point into the stories of his tough-as-nails mother, Beli, and his compassionate, rebellious sister Lola. The characters move back and forth between New Jersey and the Dominican Republic, and through them the author tells the story of the way that the dictator Trujillo affected the Dominican people and created the Dominican diaspora. Diaz includes lots of fascinating references to Dominican history and culture in his story. The story moves quickly, and each character has his/her own engaging voice. Diaz is equally comfortable using references to minutia of The Lord of the Rings as New Jersey street life. He's funny and edgy, but he maintains a profound empathy for his characters. I highly recommend this book!