Further reading: Wu Yin-ning, Where Is the Battlefield?-Taiwanese Agriculture Observed

Writing about the Stanislavsky method of acting, the German playwright Bertolt Brecht once wrote that workers should not dwell in abstractions, but in reality. They should defeat their overlords and become their own masters; not just seek union with God but with their fellow suffering laborers; not be mired in their own selves but figure out ways to combat the enemy.

Yang Ju-men, known as the "Rice Bomber" for planting 17 rice-filled explosive devices in Taiwan between 2003 and 2004 to protest the government's neglect of farmers, once went through life experiences not unlike those of the Latin-American revolutionary Che Guevara, which the latter chronicled in Motorcycle Diaries. In his first-ever book, Rice Is Not a Bomb (Rice), Yang offers up his own reflections on what he saw, heard, thought and felt on his own journey.

What is different is that Guevara's book became the most widely read of his works after his execution at age 39 in 1967, which resulted in his subsequent vilification (by those in power) and mythologization (by other revolutionaries). In the end, Guevara became an empty vessel, a romantic symbol for rebellion. How did Yang, still alive and active today, gain that kind of image? The reason is that he has always been a solitary, romanticized hero figure, even if he himself says, "That's impossible! To me, there are no heroes in the world, just scoundrels who step through others' blood to scrabble to the top." (p. 134)