EBOOK
Heaven Is a Place on Earth
Searching for an American Utopia
Adrian ShirkSeries: Heaven Is a Place on Earth(0)
About
An exploration of American ideas of utopia through one millennial's quest to eke out a life lived with others under late-stage, predatory capitalism.
When Adrian Shirk's father-in-law has a stroke and loses his ability to speak and walk, she and her husband—both adjuncts in their mid-twenties—become his primary caretakers. The stress of daily caretaking, navigating America's broken health care system, and ordinary 21st century financial insecurity propels Shirk an odyssey of American utopian experiments in hopes that they might offer alternative ways forward. Along the way, Shirk seeks solace in her own community of friends, artists, writers, and theologians. Together they try to imagine a different kind of life, examining what might be replicable within the histories and ideas of utopia-making, and what might be doomed.
Rather than "no place", Shirk reframes utopia as something that, according to the laws of capital and conquest, shouldn't be able to exist—but did anyway, if only for a moment. Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with field work, Heaven is a Place on Earth is an idiosyncratic and often jubilant study of American utopian experiments—from the Shakers to the radical faerie communes of Short Mountain to the Bronx rebuilding movement—through the lens of one millennial's quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity.
When Adrian Shirk's father-in-law has a stroke and loses his ability to speak and walk, she and her husband—both adjuncts in their mid-twenties—become his primary caretakers. The stress of daily caretaking, navigating America's broken health care system, and ordinary 21st century financial insecurity propels Shirk an odyssey of American utopian experiments in hopes that they might offer alternative ways forward. Along the way, Shirk seeks solace in her own community of friends, artists, writers, and theologians. Together they try to imagine a different kind of life, examining what might be replicable within the histories and ideas of utopia-making, and what might be doomed.
Rather than "no place", Shirk reframes utopia as something that, according to the laws of capital and conquest, shouldn't be able to exist—but did anyway, if only for a moment. Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with field work, Heaven is a Place on Earth is an idiosyncratic and often jubilant study of American utopian experiments—from the Shakers to the radical faerie communes of Short Mountain to the Bronx rebuilding movement—through the lens of one millennial's quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity.