_Riot Days_ by Maria Alyokhina Notes Prisoners are as attuned to natural phenomena as backpackers. Both groups are at the mercy of the elements. The ability of dissidents to find humor in the buffoonery of their captors is a major factor in keeping them sane. Recall the Museum of the DDR, alternately chilling (prison-transport wagons with coffin-like cells) and hilarious (the Trabi exhibit, and that about plastic clothing). The narrative feels like it starts in the middle in that we know nothing about the history of Pussy Riot and its members. Were they already known in the West? Had they made recordings without their real names? The narrative is retrospective and starts in the middle. Recall Djerassi Resident Artists' Program presentation about "blue tiles, " the dissident culture that vanished when the wall fell. P. 66: "I spent a week in quarantine, and I had the whole day, every day, free. If you call that freedom." P. 71: "'Some, he said, "including in the West, have in fact interpreted it [Pussy Riot's performance] as a freedom of speech, albeit frolicsome". But Russian society would not accept such behaviour.'" P. 73: "When someone gives a prisoner a pen and a piece of paper, the first thing she does is draws a calendar." P. 93: "Prosecutor: 'The charge was read in clear, accessible, literary Russian.'" Perfect grammar: the last refuge of nonsense babblers. P. 108: "There is no certainty or predictability. There is no fate. There is a choice. My choice and yours, in each moment that demands it." p. 139: "Once you betray yourself, even a single time, you can't stop. You become another person, a stranger to yourself. You become a prisoner. And that means you have been defeated. They will have truly deprived you of your freedom." p. 165: "I would like to live my life in such a way that whatever I leave behind has something to do with freedom and truth, and not with the emptiness that these words become as I speak them." p. 169: "He must be the man in charge, he's wearing the uniform. He must the chief, he has the epaulettes." p. 172: "It's just an illusion that you go on hunger strike to achieve results. Yes, that's how it begins but, later, you realize that it's not for the imagined outcome, but for the very right to protest." p. 195: "Freedom doesn't exist unless you fight for it every day."