Nine fictional testaments of people who have been targeted by a newly created "Department of Inland Security" for not living life with appropiate American values.
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Booklist Donna Seaman
Dramatic, unique, and provocative, these are essential stories for polarized times.
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Passionate in feeling but cool in rhetoric, these testimonials feel like haunting fragments of committed lives.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Jeff Turrentine
Like the haunting illustrations (by Alan Magee) that introduce each story, these small narratives are intimate and mysterious.
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Favorable
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Chicago Sun-Times Ron Franzcell
Lopez's writing is as stunningly original as his passion. The sheer poetry of his storytelling alone is worth the effort it would take to read this modestly slim volume.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Nine vignettes framed as letters addressing questions of personal responsibility in a diminished world: obliquely revelatory yet fiercely biting.
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Mixed
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LA Weekly Ben Cosgrove
Lopez fans will rejoice in the collection, while others might find themselves put off by the book's at times overly earnest wedding of the poet and the polemicist.
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Mixed
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Washington Post David Ignatius
Resistance tries so hard to teach in its nine pithy evocations of the true path that it comes off as a bit pedantic.
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Mixed
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Boston Globe Amanda Heller
The monologues are striking, but they project a chilly self-containment that holds us at a distance from the speakers and their stories, which fail to deliver on the sense of urgency and community promised at the outset. [1 May 2004, p. 1547]
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times Michael Harris
Lopez, who won the 1986 National Book Award for nonfiction for "Arctic Dreams," is expert at sketching in these people's varied lives and the environments in which they work. But there is a sameness to their stories. [20 June 2004, R9]
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Unfavorable
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Library Journal David Hellman
A few pieces... succeed on their own, but overall the targets of Lopez's vitriol are too obvious and his arguments too shrill to have any lasting resonance. [15 June 2004, p. 59]
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