A review by thepaperbackplanner
The Free People's Village by Sim Kern

5.0

This is the heaviest and most thought-provoking thing I have read so far for TRR. As a white cis woman, this has me thinking HARD about my own activism. I'm also coming away with a hefty reading list. To the book itself: I never felt the pace drag, and it was only too fast when I was reading so fast to get to the next page and the next and the next. The characters had so much depth and felt truly real. Texas isn't Missouri, but this story could've easily been set in St. Louis with barely any changes. This could be happening — and has happened! — in my own community. I appreciated that our main character, Maddie, fucked up over and over again, because that's a thing white cis people are destined to do on the journey to unlearn the white supremacist, patriarchal, colonialist bullshit we've been absorbing like oxygen since birth. But I also appreciated that Maddie's friends didn't always just brush off her mistakes — there were consequences, which is also the reality of the thing. Overall, this story of a protest movement working toward a better world through the brightest days and the darkest is going to stick with me for a long time.