148 pages
Published 2021
Read from March 12 to March 13
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
This book commonly gets described as “solarpunk cottagecore.” It’s a fair descriptor, but it’s only a taste of how luxurious and inviting a read this is.
Let’s be honest: our world is a mess right now. The climate is collapsing into chaos. Capitalism is burning everything down in the name of quarterly dividends; one way or another its days are numbered, and the people who benefit from that system know it. So the rest of us must endure the rise of fascism (always the last gambit of capitalism in collapse) and astroturfed moral panics about our very rights and our very existence. It’s a tough time to be poor, to be queer. I know that firsthand. I can only learn from Black, Indigenous, Latine, Jewish, Arab, Asian, African, and various other people how difficult things are when you aren’t white.
All of this is going on, all the time, inescapably. You can’t shut it off. You can’t go into the other room and close the door. You’re just in it.
So an optimistic book about a sustainable society, a book that climaxes with emotional vulnerability over a cup of tea? It broke me down. I wept over that cup of tea in a way I never would have expected. A book like this won’t stop fascism in its tracks, but a little time and space for respite is just as necessary.
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