Daughter of the Storm

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Summary: Great book!!
Review: Daughter of the Storm is a great book. I loved it. I cried when Christy's foster mother finally called her daughter. I highly recommend this book.

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Summary: The Novel and the Clearances
Review: I've just read this novel and found it to be a useful illustration of the drama of the enclosures and clearances. It is not "great literature" but because the fiction is based on real history it is more than just an engrossing story; it provides a moment of encounter with an historical period of oppression and resistance. If you find this book of interest, you might also want to read Iain Crichton Smith's novel Consider the Lilies - another novelization of the history of the Highland Clearances, this time those carried out by the Dutchess of Sutherland - the same one discussed in chapter 27 of volume I of Karl Marx's Capital.

All this history, of course, is not just history because the violence of enclosure and clearing have been continued right down to the present day: from the quasi-genocidal clearings in the Balkans and Darfur, Sudan to Mexican government attempts to complete the enclosure of indigenous lands. But so too has resistance, as exemplified by the Zapatista uprising that catalyzed the pro-democracy movement in Mexico that ended the half-century, one-party rule of the PRI and a global anti-capitalist movement that has generated not only demonstrations against the WTO, IMF, World Bank and G8, but a world-wide network of collaborative struggle against neoliberalism and its "new world order". Enjoy the novel, but bring it to bear on the struggles of the present to clarify your thinking and spur you to action.