Hot diggity! Great review of The Dandelion Insurrection by Casey Dorman! You can read this and other 5 star reviews on Amazon. amazon/The-Dandelion-Insurrection-love-revolution/dp/098481325X From Casey Dorman: The Dandelion Insurrection is meant to be more than a story. Its aim is inspirational. As a novel, it teaches and it preaches. Its message is nonviolence and love and action: Be kind. Be connected. Be unafraid. The writing is poetic and filled with imagery, no doubt a product of the authors talent as a poet as well as a storyteller. The imagery is sometimes exuberant, sometimes funny, sometimes even over-the-top, threatening to get in the way of the story, although it comes close but never does this. Inspirational and educational as The Dandelion Insurrection may be, I found it also to be a thoroughly entertaining, absorbing and intriguing read, which kept me turning pages with great eagerness until the very end of the story. Although the two main characters in the novel, Sadie and Charlie, The Man from the North, say that the Dandelion Insurrection is not against anything, but instead, in favor of life, love civil liberties, participatory democracy, economic equality, and environmental sanity, it is set against the background of an America in which corporate greed, the paranoia of the 1%, who use the war on terror as an excuse to restrict freedoms and extend the rule of moneyed interests have turned the country into an empty promise for the ordinary citizen and a virtual hell for the poor. All of the violations of democratic processes that are described in the novel are real, although the lengths to which they have been taken are grossly exaggerated (private armies for the politicians, cancellation of welfare programs, detention camps for protestors). The state of the country as pictured in the novel is one that, if it existed, would demand an insurrection. The demise of democracy in The Dandelion Insurrection is a fictional exaggeration--a rhetorical device--to all but the most paranoid of conspiracy theorists. But it is an exaggeration, not a complete falsehood. The exaggeration is needed in order to require the characters (and indeed the U.S. citizenry) to act. And the moral dilemma that is prompted is at the heart of the story. This dilemma is about how to fight evil with love, how to meet violence with nonviolence, how to be for what one believes in rather than against what one disagrees with. The dilemma surfaces in every chapter. The methods of fighting back by using human connections, hope and love are ingenious and thought-provoking. This is an inspirational manual on how to conduct a nonviolent revolution. In every act or even thought of opposition the tendency to react with anger and aggression (even if only aggressive words or thoughts) threatens to subvert each of our own vows to remain positive and loving, even toward our enemies. The characters in The Dandelion Insurrection are not immune to this human failing, but they find ways of overcoming that aggressive urge within themselves-- not easily, not without a struggle--but successfully. Rivera Sun, the author, makes it clear in her postscript to the novel that she hopes that her words can, indeed, spark a revolution. By themselves they probably wont, but The Dandelion Insurrection can take a place among other works of art or individual and community actions, among courses on theory and methods of nonviolence to join in the many voices calling for change. Its virtue is its artistic and poetic appeal that, hopefully, will serve to inspire many who might not listen to this message presented in other forms.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 01:00:04 +0000
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