Huntley, Paula (Bowlin) 1944-

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HUNTLEY, Paula (Bowlin) 1944-

PERSONAL:

Born December 31, 1944, in Little Rock, AR; daughter of Paul Richard (a business owner) and Rosemary (a librarian and homemaker; maiden name, Rhodes) Bowlin; married Edwin S. Villmoare, III (a law professor); children: (first marriage) Paul Robert Wrapp; (stepsons) Brian, Paul. Education: Lindenwood University, B.A. (history), 1966; Southern Methodist University, M.A. (history), 1971.

ADDRESSES:

Home—P.O. Box 318, Bolinas, CA 94924. Agent—Lorraine Kisly, Shickshinny, PA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

English teacher and marketing consultant.

WRITINGS:

The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo (memoir), Jeremy P. Tarcher (New York, NY), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Paula Huntley's memoir The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo is based on the journal she kept during the nearly one year, from 2000 to 2001, that she lived in Prishtina, Kosovo. Her intention was not to write a book; rather, she wanted to document every minute spent there. She carried notebooks during the day, jotting down conversations and facts, and transferred them to her computer at night. She was convinced to publish her writings when she returned to the United States.

She accompanied her husband, who had volunteered for an American Bar Association project to help create a new legal system, and Huntley, who had been an English teacher decades earlier, prepared herself beforehand to teach English as a second language, so that she would also have something to offer the people of that war-torn country where North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) peacekeeping forces continued to patrol.

Teaching materials were nearly nonexistent, so when Huntley found a copy of The Old Man and the Sea, she photocopied it and began a book club for her Albanian students, who ranged in age from fifteen years to middle age. She found that they were quick to identify with the protagonist in Ernest Hemingway's tale, and when they finished it, Huntley introduced them to other American writers. Jesse Oxfeld quoted Huntley in a Book review as noting, "The book club began to come into the class, and the class became the club." Huntley became close to many of her students as a result of this extra effort and the trust and caring that grew between them.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that "Huntley's journal not only shares their stories, but reminds readers that by volunteering, people get back more than they give." Melissa Brown reviewed the book for Bookreporter.com, finding that "Huntley is the epitome of a great teacher—one who goes above and beyond the call of duty to help her students succeed."

Huntley heard the stories of her students, of torture, rape, and killings committed by the Serbians, and of the refugee camps. She observes the poverty that continues to engulf the population of the Yugoslavian province, and she relates what she was told about the apartheid of the 1990s and Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing of Albania Muslims from 1998-99, which left 10,000 civilians dead and 860,000 homeless.

In an interview with Huntley published on the Penguin Putnam Web site, she was asked why Hemingway's book worked so well. She replied, "It's a fable of the triumph of hope and courage over adversity. For the students, the book was the story of their personal lives, of their country.…My students also loved the old man's relationship with the young boy." That mentoring relationship, she felt, made them think about the ones they share with "the older people in their families, whom they revere. They spoke to me of their grandparents, their older aunts and uncles, who had come through the years of apartheid and ethnic cleansing with 'eyes that were cheerful and undefeated.'" Huntley returned home in April 2001, but remains in touch with Kosovar friends through email.

In a review for Hope magazine, Sara Terry wrote that "while her sympathies are clearly with her students, Huntley still challenges their blanket hatred of Serbs and their desire to have a mono-ethnic country, ruled by and for Albanians." Terry said that "she also displays a humble self-knowledge often lacking among internationals at work in post-conflict situations," and added, "Huntley offers no solutions, no analysis. But what does light this book is her persistent faith in the power of connectedness, of nurturing the human spirit, of the obligations that we, as human beings, have to one another."

Star-Telegram Online contributor Lev Raphael stated that The Hemingway Book Club of Kosovo "makes for gripping, heartbreaking reading," and described it as "a book that is stirring and nearly impossible to put down."