Weren't we clever running an underground newspaper in high school? It had the whiff of samizdat--manuscripts self-published outside Soviet review. Yet though our zine had escaped the authority of adult editors, we had nothing to say worth their notice. Jump to this decade, where Emily Parker has made a study of self-publishing in China, Cuba and Russia. Free speech is harder to stifle in the internet age, but the suppression gives it authority.

China's message of resistance is coded; clampdowns are erratic but fierce. After Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution, Parker writes, the word for jasmine was blocked in text messages and the flower itself disappeared from market stalls. In Cuba bandwidth is rare, yet blogger intimidation is constant. The Russian backdrop seems scariest because the dissidents speak the most freely: The Kremlin ignores them, and so do cynical citizens.

Parker gives an outside-looking-in account of her contacts with dissidents, and their furtive nature simultaneously confirms and undermines their authority. Is Parker getting the real story? She finds it admirable that through isolation in China, fear in Cuba and apathy in Russia, people are still driven to speak out. That's reason enough to listen.