Fb2 Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture ePub

I'll be honest, I picked up this book thinking it was something else entirely. It is actually a book about homesteading, not homemaking. There is a difference between those two in my head. I am a homemaker, not a homesteader. I do not grow my own food. Yes, I make quite a bit from scratch, but the ingredients are purchased, not grown or raised by me. However, I did really enjoy this book. The first half was an eye opener into our consumer culture. The second half are the how-to's of making a go of homesteading and the values common among homesteaders. The information is presented thoroughly without talking in circles. It is well written.

I found this book to be worth my time reading it. While I do not plan to become a homesteader, I did take many things to heart. It was a great reminder to be happy with what we have and not continually strive to have more. (The happiness isn't in the more, it is in having what you need and enjoying what you do.) My needs are met. I've got time to spend with my family. I'm a very blessed and fortunate woman. I am also trying to buy more locally. It also (along with a blog post by Mavis) made me rethink my decision to insist on traditional health insurance.

If you're extremely mainstream, you may want to skip this book for now. But if you're already thinking about quality of life over making money and helping your neighbors, this book will be a good read for you, even if you can't or won't make the leap into full homesteading.

This is a very subjective and emotional review, admittedly, BUT I just wanted to thank this author for lifting the monkey of guilt off my back: the one that's been living there, whispering little nasties in my ear, ever since I left my Ph.D. program, abandoned my dissertation, shocked my fellow feminist academicians, disappointed my ambitious father, and exchanged the career track for two decades of living simply, raising my daughters,and doing our little part to save the environment.

Back in 1991, when my second daughter was born, my husband and I had no "manifesto" to explain our decision to scale back our lives. No one had attached a "name" to the conclusion I reached--after an ordeal of soul-searching, self-doubt, and even recrimination--that staying home with my babies, scaling back our ambitions and our lifestyle, and throwing my energies into raising our own organic food, becoming caretaker to a large flock of (although we didn't call them that at the time) natural, pastured chickens, of spending many, many hours volunteering with other like-minded women in our community health food cooperative, of devoting time and effort to various environmental organizations and causes, working for politicians who had believed as we did, and--most importantly--unschooling my two girls so that the world became their classroom and their minds were not limited by pedagogy or ideology, was THE most worthwhile use of my time, my passions, and my talents.

Nope. It was just a bizarre detour from my carefully laid, feminist plans. This was a life choice my husband and I HAD to make, because in our hearts we could accept no other, but society (and my own critical, Intellectual Self) sneered at our rusticity, our modest income, my domesticity, our family-centered existence. And I never, ever was able to dispel the vague shame that I had somehow, some way, failed myself and my feminist beliefs.

It was a lonely row to hoe, back then. My colleagues went on to professorships, acclaim, even some modest fame. I collected eggs, read to my children (and then taught them to read) picked and jammed strawberries, marched in parades for liberal politicians, stuffed envelopes for "good causes" and made ends meet. By conventional standards, I had "wasted my valuable education" and yet--when I looked at those healthy, happy, flourishing faces smiling up at me like sunflowers,when my Little Family paused at the end of a quiet, green, sunny spell of learning,playing and experiencing the day ON OUR OWN SCHEDULE,when I saw the stress that eroded the contentment of so many of my contemporaries (the rushing and dashing and scheduling and conflicting desires)our choices seemed right for us, and no waste at all. But...how I wish I'd had a greater sense of community! Of someone else to say, "Oh, yes...we reached the same conclusions and made the same "sacrifices" and we don't think you are nuts."

THIS book is that long-awaited community, that absolution of the last vestiges of guilt ("Quitter...Quitter"..taunted the little voice in my ear) still remaining, 20 years later. For publishing this, you have my deepest, most heartfelt gratitude.

(Oh, and it's a fantastic, well-written, carefully researched, intelligent read, as well!)

I read this book every spare minute and got through it in 2 days. There were so many YES!!!! moments! This book is wonderfully affirming for people who value OTHER things (like family, community and time to enjoy life) more than money and keeping up with the Joneses. I have lived for years on much less than I needed to so that I could be home with my kids. I have taken low paying work from home jobs rather than use my masters degree and get a "real" job. But that is because I don't value climbing the ladder and making tons of money at the expense of family life. This book affirmed that and helped me to take it a step further - toward becoming even more self-sufficient and living on less. If you want to live a more eco-friendly, family and community centered life, then you NEED this book. It gives you the permission to live differently that we just don't get in society. THANK YOU SO MUCH for writing this book! Wonderful!