Books

Always Coming Home by Ursula K Le Guin. It is a fictional ethnography written from the far future about a culture in the near future after life after some apocalyptic event in the very near future. Maybe 1/6th of it is like a traditional narrative about a girl who grows up stuck between two cultures. Her mother is a member of the Kesh which is the culture the book studies and her father is of a different culture called the Condor. Their cultures are dramatically different. The Kesh are anarchic, egalitarian, matriarchal and peaceful. The Condor are capitalist, patriarchal and war like. The rest of the book goes into detail about the Kesh. It tells some of their legends, fairy tales. It describes their performance art. It describes their creation myth. It talks about their holidays and their relationships.

Le Guin is my favorite author ever. The Dispossessed and the Left Hand of Darkness are such incredible books. Le Guin is a very strong anarchist and she uses this book and many of her other works to criticize capitalism. But none of them do so in a way as unique and artistic as Always Coming Home. It's moving, it's touching. It really takes you to another world and culture and helps you to see some of the assumptions you have just because you live in this world. This book is a work of absolute genius. I don't think any other work of art I've ever read has really conveyed something ideological as so personal and moving.

It's a slow burn and parts of it will baffle and confuse you. But the totality of it is so incredibly unique and artistic that I think it's worth suffering through the rougher edges.