Heaven Is a Place on Earth

December 6, 2021
Essayist Shirk (And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy) mixes autobiography and history in this enlightening study of utopian communities in America. Loosely defining utopias as “something that, according to the laws of capital and conquest, was never supposed to be able to exist, but somehow did,” Shirk documents her own efforts to reclaim her creative energy and build a communal life with friends and other writers and artists, and visits the sites of vanished utopian societies, including the furniture-building Shakers in Mount Lebanon, N.Y., as well as contemporary communes such as the Bruderhof in the Catskills, where members build and sell wooden toys. She notes that, despite differing belief systems, modern utopias often network with one another, offering labor and experience in order to help ensure their long-term survival. She also poses intriguing questions about the possibility of achieving true gender and racial equality within communes, which skew overwhelmingly white and often return women to traditional domestic roles, and reflects on how an intense period of caretaking for her ailing father-in-law placed a strain on her marriage and her finances and highlighted the inadequacies of “normal” society. Enriched by Shirk’s trenchant observations and open-minded curiosity, this is a winning survey of the desire to make the world a better place.

February 15, 2022
Ambitious jeremiad about the contrarian past and present-day tendency for idealistic outsiders to gather in flawed utopias. "I grew up taking for granted that utopian visions were possible," writes Shirk in this sprawling synthesis of memoir and social history. The book, she explains, coalesced as a different project to develop a DIY artistic commune was thwarted by both personal and social frustrations. Shirk yearned for an alternative to late-stage capitalism's oppressive effects, which past "shared-purse" communal efforts offered. "The way toward lower overhead, toward less reliance on wage-earning, is it seems through collectivity," she writes. Simultaneously, her long-term relationship was in decline, partly due to caretaking of her partner's ailing father, leading her to consider alternatives to such difficult domestic arrangements. She began to unpack how communities have been created in response to these issues, starting with the historical narrative: "I had been dimly aware for some time that I was writing about American utopian communities." Shirk delves into the twisting paths of such groups in the 19th century as well as the 1960s, but she also considers contemporary grassroots examples of communal living, ranging from the historically rooted Bruderhof and Camphill movements to Philadelphia's Simple Houses to newer attempts centered around indie culture in the Catskills. The author does not ignore the privilege involved in such contemporary movements, noting of her own youthful efforts, "Our mission was absent of any real ethical content. Looked at another way, we were just a bunch of privileged assholes in Brooklyn in the early twenty-first century." Shirk writes deftly and in depth. She is well-attuned to her topic's threads of historical and spiritual complexity as well as her own feelings about relationships, sexuality, and community. Some readers may find that her interweaving of personal tensions with contemporary and historical narratives, and social definitions of heaven, occasionally leads to a disjointed narrative, but it's a story worth contemplating. Rigorous, personalized argument for the continued relevance of an old idea.

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Starred review from January 1, 2022
"What kinds of relationships with your kids, spouse, neighbors, workmates would be possible, that otherwise aren't in a culture built on individualized or atomized survival?" Shirk (And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy, 2017) reflects on this question during a visit to a Bruderhof community where members share in the responsibilities of daily labors like cooking, cleaning, and farming, but the question animates her entire book. Melding memoir with wide-ranging research into American experiments in communal living like the Shakers and The Farm (an intentional community founded by hippies in the late 1960s), Shirk seeks historical and contemporary ways of living that are more sustainable, bountiful, creative, and supportive than the siloed, workhorse model favored under capitalism. Without idealizing these communal experiments, Shirk takes their complexities and contradictions as part of the necessary reality of imagining other ways of living. In the opening pages, she describes how the book grew out of notes and unformed essays begun in her mid-twenties when she and her husband were running on empty trying to care for a sick relative and support themselves. At times, an almost stream-of-consciousness narrative voice overwhelms the book's many insights, but it also communicates the urgency and earnestness of her quest.

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