By Sajay Samuel,
Clinical Professor of Political Economy at the Pennsylvania State University
“There is something peculiar about this book: the fact is the cover gives it away right from the start.”[1] In the foreground, a young man, Zazu, holds his malamute husky, Cocomiso, both atop their friend, a humpback whale. In the background, a tableau of the contemporary grotesque: three sewers vomiting effluent into the sea on the left balanced by five industrial chimneys spewing noxious fumes into the air on the right. Between these man-made geysers, a moon hangs: low, heavy, ominously red.
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Zazu Dreams: Between the Scarab and the Dung Beetle, A Cautionary Fable for the Anthropocene Era” by Cara Judea Alhadeff is not a bedtime story book for the helicoptered and coddled — whether young or old — sensitized to microaggressions and needy of trigger warnings. Zazu dreams up a proper fairy tale — in which the comforting is enfolded within the scary and the beautiful is twisted into the ugly. Zazu dreams in images and in words, in philosophical musings and in historical forays — Zazu dreams to awaken us from our smug and slothful slumber.