Reviews with content warning for Deadnaming - The Free People's Village

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The Free People's Village by Sim Kern

18 reviews

aeons_v_atlas's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Content Warnings

caseythereader's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Thanks to Levine Querido for the free copy of this book.

- THE FREE PEOPLE'S VILLAGE is unlike any book I've ever read before. I never thought a book about the internal struggles of a group of activists would rivet me, but I absolutely could not put this down.
- This book is entirely from the POV of Maddie, a young white woman joining a Black-led movement to preserve a Black neighborhood. She doesn't always handle new information and situations perfectly (or even well), and she eventually has to reckon with her place in the movement and take accountability for actions she does or does not take. I think Kern struck the right balance here - Maddie is not a white savior, but she is given space to catch up on the history and politics she does not know (and even then, she is reprimanded for never bothering to learn these things!)
- Looking at this book from a wider perspective, I appreciated how Kern took the fork in the road that we often romanticize - Gore winning the 2000 election - and showed how even if there was massive movement on the climate, our society would still find a way to use those changes to enrich white people and push out poor and BIPOC people. Honestly, this book is one to give to white liberals who you wish would consider leftist ideas.

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ebook_em's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful informative tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The Free People’s Village is a heavy, immersive read that made me feel equal parts anger, sadness, pride, hope, and cringe. I get the sense that evoking each of those feelings was intentional.

The plot unfolds in an alternate timeline in which Al Gore won the 2000 presidential election and declared a “War on Climate Change.” As a policy researcher, I was so impressed by how Sim Kern revealed what can go wrong in the implementation of liberal policies — like rich people abusing the carbon tax system and greenwashing galore — and how the Democratic platform on climate change is totally insufficient to tackle environmental racism and imperialism. In fact, this story shows how the “war” on climate change could be weaponized in very conventional ways against people of the global majority. The fact that climate policies in this story were used to further expand the scope of policing also felt chillingly realistic.

The coalition of organizations, activists, homeless folks, and others who made up the Free People’s Village seemed very real as well. I loved Kern’s depiction of the boring and mundane aspects of organizing (figuring out how often to empty the port-a-potties is something I’ve had to do and didn’t care to remember, lol) plus the circular, mind-numbing infighting that is inevitable in any long-term organizing effort. Around the middle of the story, there’s an inciting incident when the movement fractures into very different tactics — the secrecy, guilt, and political questions around this incident were really compelling.

I also appreciated the treatment of SA in this book. Rape culture and flimsy restorative justice responses to violence within activist spaces are way more typical than many organizers want to acknowledge. Not including some mention of sexual violence in an encampment setting would’ve felt like a major omission, but it didn’t feel perfunctory as a plot line either. All these examples highlight Kern’s explorations of power dynamics throughout the book: between landlords and tenants, cops and citizens, people with criminal records and those without, Black & Indigenous organizers and white voyeurs, cis and trans people, etc. The depiction of the technologies and media also seemed true to life; in many ways, this book felt like a fiction analog to Zeynep Tufekci’s “Twitter and Tear Gas.”

Now for the aspects that will be unappealing to some readers. The first-person POV of the white main character, Maddie, is cringeworthy more often than not. The cringe factor is intentional, as Maddie is a young white teacher and baby activist entering Black-led organizing spaces for the first time, and she messes up a lot in the process. I thought the author did a pretty good job of not making this a white savior story, though there were times Maddie could’ve taken more ownership of her actions without endless coaching from Black and brown people. Maddie participates in some actions but repeatedly chickens out and mostly does grunt work while her friends and bandmates do the more high-profile leadership work. Even though her inner thoughts are painful to read, I think her perspective will resonate with people. Some readers might also be turned off by the didactic tone of the book. Personally, I don’t mind heavy-handed social commentary in fiction and thought it made sense to learn fundamental theories and principles through Maddie’s naive POV.

Overall, this was a great read that left me with a lot to think about. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy.

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takarakei's review

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This is a heavy book, but it's well worth the read.

There is a big theme in the main character Maddie experiencing that feeling of 'what if' she had done x differently. And of course the answer is that A) we can't change the past and B)such minute things that happen really don't make a difference long term. I found the point of this book to be that anything that has happened in the past if changed (Al Gore winning for example) wouldn't have made any real difference in terms of where we are sociopolitically today. Because we live in a white supremacist capitalistic society and those oppressive societal structures need to be completely removed before society as a whole could drastically change for the largest group of people worldwide. We individually can make certain choices and work together to make change, but ultimate it's these oppressive power structures which keep our society stagnant.

I thought the themes of greenwashing (aka furthering capitalism through consumerism) were so realistic. This captured what it's like to be a white woman involved in activism so well. How there are so many cringe moments when you are trying to help and learn, and sometimes you just get it wrong. It's a rather bleak outlook, but the ending does sew some seeds of optimism and inspiration (the mycelium quote blew my mind).

I know I'll be thinking about this book for a long time and recommending it to a lot of people.

Thank you Netgalley and Sim Kern for the ARC!

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bookishmillennial's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

Disclaimer if you’ve read other reviews by me and are noticing a pattern: You’re correct that I don’t really give starred reviews because I don’t like leaving them. Most often, I will only leave them if I vehemently despised a book.I enjoy most books for what they are, & I extract lessons from them all.

Everyone’s reading experiences are subjective, so I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not, regardless if I add stars or not. Find me on Instagram: @bookish.millennial or tiktok: @bookishmillennial

premise:

dystopian adult science fiction, set in an alternate 2020 where Al Gore won the Presidential Election, and blows full steam ahead to the war on climate change, charging a carbon tax for almost everything
first-person perspective of Maddie
Maddie has left behind a toxic, abusive marriage to a Catholic man and is reckoning with and questioning her religious identity now too
She works as an English teacher during the day, and goes to a punk space called The Lab at nights
Maddie joins a band, Bunny Bloodlust, meets new people (Red, Gestas, Fish), and begins to examine her own privilege and complacency in white supremacy
She joins a Black-led movement/occupation protest to save the Eighth Ward, the primarily Black neighborhood that the Lab is in
Maddie goes from extremely religious (as a way to rebel from her parents surprisingly) to being part of an anarchistic revolution, and unpacking her place in the world!
themes and topics covered: race, religion/shame, white saviorism, gender, sexual orientation, climate change, drug abuse, gentrification
check the content warnings I've noted below!

thoughts:
Maddie was a great main character to follow! She was representative of white saviorism, white guilt and white liberalism all in one, yet Sim still fleshed Maddie out, and let her make mistakes (like it was extremely cringe sometimes hahaha), take accountability for them, and try to do better in the future. I think more people need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, with knowing they are going to fuck up, and practicing taking accountability in saying "I didn't know that" or "I should have known better, and I will be more mindful in the future".

Maddie's path to becoming an ally and fighting for justice is full of relatable conversations with her new found family, and I think most people will feel seen by both the defensiveness and naivety displayed at times, as well as the genuine yearning to be better. I firmly believe Maddie is a great main character for people who are new to learning these concepts (abolition theory, mutual aid, anti-racism, intersectional feminism, etc) to follow, as we see that Maddie is not perfect, but she is given the space to be brave, and to try again.

I loved how Gestas recommended books to Maddie for her existential journey to "becoming an ally 101": Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur, Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis, Black Marxism by J. Robinson, and a few more. The scene where these book recommendations happen is definitely one of my favorites. I appreciated how the discussion played out between Gestas & Maddie, and even though Maddie fumbled a lot (as Maddie does), I felt like this was a helpful way to outline the ideas of equity and social justice for people who are possibly reading about this for the first time!

Overall, this book felt like a call to action, and a reminder to keep putting in the work, even if you don't see the fruits of your labor *right now*, it's still worth it, and the community/revolution still needs you to keep planting seeds! I loved the ending chapter with the metaphors of the mushrooms, and felt hopeful and inspired by the end of it.

This is the first book I've read by Sim, but I'm excited to check out more of their work!

quotations that stood out to me:

I just felt completely fucking haunted by drunk cis men. I did not want to make space for them in my life, ever again.
“That is why you are going to war, Angel. Because the property of corporations is threatened.
"You think there’s a single book by a Black author about the Jim Crow South where the hero is a white man? Hell the fuck no. And y’all aren’t teaching Richard Wright or Zora Neale Hurston or Toni Morrison, are you?”
I must’ve looked like a fish, with my mouth hanging open in the air. The truth of what he’d said knocked the wind out of me, and I couldn’t find a single lie to argue with. How had I never seen it like that?
“It’s because I’m Black and a dropout and a prisoner. That’s why I have a ‘better analysis,’ and that’s something you can’t buy, not like a college degree. Plus, I read a fuck-ton."
“You realize this is unpaid intellectual labor I am doing for you?” He quirked an eyebrow at me, but he was grinning. Book people can’t help it—we love recommending books.
“Now are you sure you can handle this? It’s gonna fuck you up.” He handed me a well-worn copy of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Taking it in my hands felt like holding a bomb. But I was ready for it to blow up whatever walls it was coming for. I worked so hard to be a good teacher, but no matter what I did, every class felt like a battle, every day a miserable slog through failure. If communists knew why my students loathed me, I was willing to hear what they had to say.
“That was before I realized just how precious pride is. How dangerous it is to the people in power, and that’s why they want to take it away from you. That’s why they scare little kids with stories of burning for eternity just for having a backbone.”
“What did he steal? Why did he steal it? What if he needed it to survive, or for his family? What were the material conditions that led to the theft? And why is stealing a crime anyways? What is property? What is ownership? Why is it valued more than a man’s life?”
“Do you know there’s been a two-hundred-percent increase in prisoner deaths since AHICA started? Because how the fuck are we supposed to live on five bucks a day? People are starving to death in their own homes. We gotta rely on the kindness of strangers, or family, to feed us and house us—and so do you know how much that opens us up to abuse?"
Even if we weren’t victorious now, the work we had put in mattered, sowed seeds for the future. The words felt empty to me, and I was trying not to cry, bidding farewell to the Lab in my heart.
“Millions of Black people have become literal prisoners in their own homes for minor carbon fraud offenses. Meanwhile, white people and corporations keep polluting to their hearts’ content—as long as they pay a pittance to ‘offset’ their carbon footprints.”
“We’re taking a stand here to protest the eviction of hundreds of families in this community. If you believe that Black neighborhoods matter, join us. If you believe we should invest in our existing communities, rather than building new hyperways out to developments in the suburbs, join us! If you want the government to stop blaming climate change on our most vulnerable people, join us! And together, we can save the Eighth!”
“Hell, I know I’m supposed to go easy on people in your situation but . . . I mean, can I just point out—it’s a bit white-savior-y isn’t it? To blame yourself for everything that happened? Like, the movement did not come down to you. You are not, and could never have been, our savior. You’re just . . . Maddie Ryan.”
Her comrades in Save the Eighth were her friends, and over the course of this year, we’d become her friends too. That’s why she’d invited Gestas to stay with her. All that bickering over leftist theory and tactics? That was friendship to Shayna.
An excavator can tear down a building, but it can’t tear down our desire for revolution.
"So protest movements always spread the spores for the next protest movement. Like mushrooms, they’re only meant to last a short while. Hell, the Free People’s Village was a sturdy little mushroom—we were out there for months! And since then, all the zillions of spores we sent into the world? They’ve been growing. Trust. Now we just got to wait for the next time conditions are right—and be ready. In the meantime, we grow our network—we spread our mycelium, we strengthen our community.”
When it comes to defeating capitalism, I’m not so naïve as to think we can win. Not how you think. Not decisively, for all time. All our protests, all our organizing, they can’t defeat the tanks and gas and guns and greed machines—at least not forever, not right now. So what I think, these days, is you have to accept that there’s no winning, and learn to live for the joy of the struggle. And for maybe. Maybe someday.
This city, this state, this country is not free, but for those few shining hours, in that torus of space-time, those of us marching—we were free.
Every day that the Village stood was a battle we won against empire.
Ever since City Hall, living through each day has required a conscious choice. I intend to stick around.
I have tasted a free world a few times now, and I crave another bite. I will go to work and walk my dog. I will bide my time, waiting for the conditions to be just right, waiting for the sun and rain and rage and suffering to accumulate just so. I want to be there when the new world tries to give birth to itself again. I want to be there when the injustice grows so thick that people find courage in themselves they never knew existed.
Abolish police, end fossil fuels, and land back!

Content Warnings

meganpbell's review

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adventurous dark inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

In an alternate 2020, in which Al Gore once won the presidency and Democrats have held court for 20 years…we still live in an economically and racially unjust, imperialist, carceral state (now with more greenwashing!), and teacher and punk band guitarist Maddie Ryan finds herself and her community forever changed when she stands against the building of a new hyperway through the Black 8th Ward she’s inadvertently helped gentrify and gets swept up in a revolution. Achingly real, bitterly funny, and deeply moving, The Free People’s Village is a commentary, both compassionate and cutting, on the woke white activist’s journey and, above all, a full-throated ode to resistance and the found family that fuels it.

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c0uldyimagine's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

kays_reading_journal's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

5⭐️

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to love this book. It’s been awhile since I’ve read any sort of alternate timeline or political heavy books, and I didn’t think I’d get into it, but I absolutely loved this. I had a whole convo with my mom (who doesn’t even read) because I needed to talk about this novel and all the thoughts it was provoking. It forced me to re-examine some of my views about things happening in my city right now as well, and I’m really glad for it.

The main character is very close to me identity wise, and I think personality wise as well. She’s imperfect, she’s flawed, but she’s trying to become better and that’s what makes this novel so great. This book held a lot of realism and I think it was a breath of fresh air.

Despite the whole novel being single pov, the other characters were still strongly developed. There was foreshadowing for the end throughout the entire book, and I was constantly on a rollercoaster of feeling hopeful vs. pessimistic. Every time the characters experienced a win, I was excited with them and turning to the next page enthusiastically. Every time they experienced a drawback, I was dreading what would come next.

While this book definitely won’t be for everyone, if you enjoy alternate realities, social justice, or want to branch out from your usual genre, I think you’ll enjoy this book!

Thank you to NetGallley, Levine Querido, and Sim Kern for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

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