Reviews for Youth and Theatre of the Oppressed

The average rating for Youth and Theatre of the Oppressed based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-11-27 00:00:00 Victor Nieto An incredible tale of espionage, intrigue, hypocrisy, deception, and betrayal. Still, the characters never really seemed to come alive. You get to know facts, but they remain enigmatic and remote. With that aside, this is quite an interesting story. The story is so wacky that I actually had to fact-check some of this stuff to make sure it wasn't some big joke. An insane story that is all the more insane because it actually happened. To fight the British, America needed supplies. Incredibly, at the start of the revolution, America had no currency, not many weapons, and no way to make weapons. The French actually provided America with something like 90% of their gunpowder during the war and exercised all the fiscal restraint of a drunk businessman at a bar. And this massive spending contributed to the staggering debt that France acquired, which, of course, contributed to the French Revolution. We also get to know Silas Deane, whose name pops up occasionally in books but who otherwise remains largely forgotten. The signers of the Declaration put their signatures on that document to "mutually pledge to each other [of] our Lives, our fortunes, and our sacred Honor." Silas Deane was not present because he was in France, expending his life, losing his fortune, and compromising his honor. And during his tenure in France, Deane's wife died and he grew estranged from his son. Deane also proved to be cunning enough to outsmart Ben Franklin (arguably the most devious trickster in America not including Jefferson). In all, quite a juicy tale. Deane traveled to France alone, knowing nobody there and unable to speak French. Despite these handicaps, he was expected to purchase arms gunpowder and uniforms for a 25,000-man army, all of it on credit, and do so without arousing British suspicion. And without any diplomatic experience and vague instructions, Deane was expected to negotiate treaties as the unofficial diplomat of the United States, a country that didn't even really exist yet. Along the way, an incredible cast of characters is introduced, including an ingenious British double agent named Edward Bancroft, an insane pyromaniac named James Aitken, the paranoid Arthur Lee, and the master spy Paul Wentworth. And Deane made numerous enemies during his mission, among them John Adams and Thomas Paine. Paine actually deliberately lied in order to discredit Deane's contributions, which caused Paine's removal from the Foreign Affairs Committee. In all, this is a good counterpoint to the heroic myth that the revolution was won through honor, courage, wisdom, and devotion. Virtuous men like Adams and Washington were capable of spiteful, questionable, and even petty acts, and hypocrites like Jefferson were capable of statesmanship. And, of course, Deane and Beaumarchais, and d'Eon were capable of all these.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-09-15 00:00:00 Nelson Michael This was an enjoyable book which brought to light one of the seedier, more morally questionable (and yet deeply significant) subplots of the American Revolution. This is not the story of Washington leading a daring escape across the Delaware; or Adams debating with the Continental Congress; or Jefferson penning the Declaration of Independence. "Unlikely Allies" is a story of backdoor deals, light treason, conspiracy, money laundering, spycraft, deception, and intrigue. There's even a dose of transgenderism (I think?? The Chevalier was nothing if not enigmatic) to make the final story all the more exotic and improbable. "Unlikely Allies" is a story about three people whose names are largely lost to history: Silas Deane, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, and the Chevalier d'Eon. Deane was a prosperous Connecticut merchant and original Continental Congress member...who was sent to France to plead on behalf of the American Colonies long before Benjamin Franklin famously traveled there for the same purpose. Beaumarchais was an accomplished artist & playwright who created a shell company designed to deal supplies, arms, & ammunition to the desperate colonials...all supposedly without the knowledge of the French king. And the Chevalier d'Eon was a French spy (and cross-dresser extraordinaire) living in London and sitting on loads of incriminating evidence that would ruin the French throne. These three colorful, opinionated, fatally prideful characters each had a crucial part to play in cementing the alliegance between France and the American colonies. Without their exhaustive, tireless behind-the-scenes machinations, the alliance may never have been formed. The colonists, bereft of supplies and desperate, may have succumbed to the British army. In short, the history of America may have been very different without the contributions of these three men/women and their efforts. Since so much of their work was done on the down-low or "behind the scenes," author Joel Richard Paul is occasionally forced to estimate or deduct their motivations or methods. Overall, though, this is a well-researched story, with decades of time for new evidence to be released that adds more color to the historical tale (in one instance, a friend of Deane's was revealed as a British double agent more than a century after the fact!). This is a complicated story, with a lot of supporting characters; as a result, I sometimes had trouble keeping all the names and places straight. Luckily, the book is not overly long, so it never became an impossible task. Even knowing the overall outcome of the situation, I was impressed with the amount of tension Mr. Paul was able to wring out of the situation. At times, I wondered if their plot would ever bear fruit, or if it would all be wasted by the vagaries of fate, or the politics of men often ignorant of the urgent situation. The book is not flawless; the author often found it necessary to back up in time to explain someone's backstory, and thus the overall time frame of the book was occasionally difficult to follow. Mr. Paul was often somewhat repetitive as well; I found him reiterating points he'd already made in previous chapters, and I felt it was unnecessary. Despite these minor issues, "Unlikely Allies" is still a great read for those interested in American history, and in lesser-known tales from the Revolutionary War era.