"HEAVEN IS A PLACE ON EARTH tells the stories of both living and long-gone Americans trying to make utopia. Within these stories is Adrian Shirk's own practical and moral inquiry: how can she live a life "in community" in America today, a life which is not organized around private property, automation, and the acquisition of personal wealth? When Shirk's father-in-law has a stroke and loses his ability to speak and walk, her husband becomes his primary caretaker. Navigating the broken American health care system to advocate for his father is practically a full time job-on top of his PhD studies. Adrian makes a living for them both by shuttling all over New York City, piecing together adjunct teaching positions. She seeks solace in her community of artists and writers, in trying to identify the inspiring or replicable within the histories and ideas of utopia-making in our dystopian country. Rather than "no place", Shirk reframes utopian experimentation in the United States 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. Failure seems integral, and is that a comfort? Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with field work, HEAVEN IS A PLACE ON EARTH is an idiosyncratic-and despite everything, often jubilant-study of American utopian experiments, as well as the story of a young woman's quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity"--
adult
Adrian Shirk.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-333).
