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A review by reads2cope
The Free People's Village by Sim Kern
3.0
This will be a long review...
I love and appreciate Sim Kern’s activism and voice online, and so maybe my expectations were too high going into this book after all I'd heard about it, but I unfortunately kind of hated it. I found Maddie insufferable and Red awful. While a lot of the theory and activism in the book is well explained and could be inspiring, it fell flat as a story.
Maddie is insufferable not only because she cries as much as possible, constantly puts herself down, and has no self awareness beyond apologizing at every opportunity for her whiteness (without many offers of reparations) but mostly because she has no political backbone, yet expects everyone else to. At every turn, she explains how she only cared about Save the Eighth because of her personal relationships to the Lab, and that gets passed over. She never deeply interrogates or questions the theory people like Justice try to teach her - she simply parrots what she’s been told by others, then admits that she didn’t actually finish reading some of the books she was lent, like Black Marxism. While others around her engage in the theory, asking questions and making plans, Maddie is a bystander, doing what’s she’s asked without question beyond her own feelings of the actions. She tells us she would have chickened out of the city hall march if not for the peer pressure of the marchers behind her. It is so hard to root for someone so spineless.
Maddie is insufferable not only because she cries as much as possible, constantly puts herself down, and has no self awareness beyond apologizing at every opportunity for her whiteness (without many offers of reparations) but mostly because she has no political backbone, yet expects everyone else to. At every turn, she explains how she only cared about Save the Eighth because of her personal relationships to the Lab, and that gets passed over. She never deeply interrogates or questions the theory people like Justice try to teach her - she simply parrots what she’s been told by others, then admits that she didn’t actually finish reading some of the books she was lent, like Black Marxism. While others around her engage in the theory, asking questions and making plans, Maddie is a bystander, doing what’s she’s asked without question beyond her own feelings of the actions. She tells us she would have chickened out of the city hall march if not for the peer pressure of the marchers behind her. It is so hard to root for someone so spineless.
By the last chapter, we’re supposed to believe that she’s lived with activists for years, read theory and revolutionary memoirs, but the chant “from the river to the sea” is new to her?
The story itself was full of other contradictions to me. Maddie is constantly worried about her asthma being triggered, but no one thinks twice about smoking in her face or sending her into a protest that is sure to be tear-gassed. Disability justice is lacking in general in this work. Further, she has dated at least two abusers, but it feels like the reader is supposed to root for her relationship with Red? Red was just as abusive. Xe smashes instruments in front of Maddie twice, once specifically targeted at her, making aggressive eye contact with her. This is abusive behavior! Xe took advantage of her breakdowns, lied to her, and Xir freak-outs were not only childish but horrible. Smaking the organ was the final straw for me, but xir dismissal of indigenous cultures and refusal to be taught was just another red flag.
Maddie’s behavior at her school was also confusing. I rooted for her to connect with her students and teach beyond the lesson planned by the state, but her interaction with her boss was unprofessional. It felt like another example of her failing to think more than one step ahead. Her calling her boss a “bitch” later felt needlessly reductionist and misogynistic.
Finally, the book was too meta. Especially the reference to fan fiction of authors who write about alternative timelines and “maybe if Bush would have been elected, there’d have been a zoonotic pandemic.”
The last few paragraphs were beautiful, but were also an info dump. I appreciate the amount of research that must have gone into this work, but putting it all so plainly came at the expense of the story. Trust readers to see the theory behind character’s actions, rather than spell the theory out in rote dialogue.
The last few paragraphs were beautiful, but were also an info dump. I appreciate the amount of research that must have gone into this work, but putting it all so plainly came at the expense of the story. Trust readers to see the theory behind character’s actions, rather than spell the theory out in rote dialogue.