Breakfast Wine by Alex Poppe
'Breakfast Wine' by Alex Poppe
Alex Poppe was adrift. Soon tiring of corporate life, the Marquette business-economics graduate tried acting in New York with no success. She was a person in search not only of purpose but of herself. Her ticket to destiny was going abroad to teach English as a second language.
In 2011 she found herself in northern Iraq, Kurdistan, at a school for children of the autonomous region’s elite. Breakfast Wine is an engaging memoir of her thorny path in and around the classroom. Her colleagues included a convicted rapist, and many Kurdish men treated her as an object for gaping and pawing. As for her students, their ear buds and iPhones were only the smallest obstacles. In their minds, family connections insured their future status, making education optional at best.
Not that Poppe was well educated about her assignment. She admits never having heard of Kurdistan and prepared for the sojourn by learning Arabic (the locals speak Kurdish). But she’s a quick study and came to appreciate a historically persecuted people who, in their own saying, “have no friends but the mountains” that have sometimes sheltered them from bad, powerful neighbors. Poppe was looking for adventure when she left the U.S. and found several lifetimes worth. Did she discover her purpose or herself? Find out when she discusses Breakfast Wine in conversation with Milwaukee author Kate Wisel, 6:30 p.m. Friday, June 13, at Boswell Books.
Buy Breakfast Wine on Amazon here.
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