Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia

by Adrian Shirk

An exploration of American ideas of utopia through the lens of one millennial's quest to live a more communal life under late-stage capitalism.

Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with fieldwork, Heaven Is a Place on Earth is an idiosyncratic study of American utopian experiments—from the Shakers to the radical faerie communes of Short Mountain to the Bronx rebuilding movement—through the lens of one millennial’s quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity.

When Adrian Shirk's father-in-law has a stroke and loses his ability to speak and walk, she and her husband—both adjuncts in their midtwenties—become his primary caretakers. The stress of daily caretaking, navigating America’s broken health care system, and ordinary twenty-first-century financial insecurity propels Shirk into an odyssey of American utopian experiments in the hopes that they might offer a way forward.

Along the way, Shirk seeks solace in her own community of friends, artists, and theologians. They try to imagine a different kind of life, examining what might be replicable within the histories of utopia-making, and what might be doomed. Rather than "no place," Shirk reframes utopia as something that, according to the laws of capital and conquest, shouldn't be able to exist—but does anyway, if only for a moment.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, History, Essays, Sociology, Religion, Philosophy

352 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 15, 2022

About the author

Adrian Shirk is the author of And Your Daughters Shall Prophesy (Counterpoint Press, 2017), a hybrid-memoir exploring American women prophets and spiritual celebrities. Shirk was raised in Portland, Oregon, and has since lived in New York and Wyoming. She’s a columnist at Catapult, and her essays have appeared in The Atlantic, among others. She has produced radio stories for Wyoming Public Media and Pop Up Archive, and she holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Currently, she teaches in Pratt Institute’s BFA Creative Writing Program, and lives on the border of the Bronx and Yonkers with her husband, Sweeney, and Quentin the cat

http://www.adrianshirk.com/
and
http://www.counterpointpress.com/auth...

Reviews

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the interwoven personal and research narratives. I felt really comforted while reading, which isn’t (at least for me) a typical reading sensation.

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughts upon 2023 re-read: I think this might be my perfect book, I just love it so much

Love, love, love. Fantastic mix of memoir, niche history of past utopian experiments, theological musings about radical Christianity and ideas of grief and community, little moments with friends and loved ones that feel intentional and therefore miraculous, and most of all cultural critique of America and its fascination with creating new ways of living and “breaking away from the norms of American culture and how that is also tied with settler colonialism. I did not fully vibe with everything she said but even then I thought it was fascinating and absolutely want to re-read it when it comes out in hardcover in mid-March! And you should read it too!

Thanks to Counterpoint for providing me with a free early e-copy in exchange for an honest review!

[Lisa Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adrian Shirk is in search of utopia: an egalitarian intentional community that would welcome her. During this very personal journey she finds many communities past and present that flourished and some few that remain. In the end, she realizes that you don't find a utopia, you build one. Fascinating.

[Lena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really had a good time reading this book. I received this from a friend who had two copies, and probably wouldn’t have known to grab it otherwise. This book made me feel Adrians presence. I lived for the pages about her journey and the autobiographical qualities of those pages. I was enlightened on many aspects of communal living throughout the history of America, and appreciated her attention to detail and which communities she highlighted. As a Jewish reader I felt that her explanations were thorough, without any previous knowledge of biblical texts. Really the reason I am writing a review is that Adrian might see that I did read and make note of her line saying she is looking at what people are saying about her book ;) As an artist, if not for life, and 3 young children, taking a “rest” at Mutual Aid Society would be on a bucket list of mine.

[Marcella · Rating 5 out of 5]

if there was a required reading list to know me this book would be on it.

This deeply personal exploration of what utopia and community means is filled with a zeal for good things(good life?) and the crushing weight of late stage capitalism that I often feel.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, but thought it might have benefitted from some trimming, especially in the first 100 pages, which took a long time to get going. The ending gets a bit hazy, too; considering the beginning spends so much time setting up the personal material realities of Shirk and her partner, I thought it strange how significantly reduced those considerations become at the end, when things get the most interesting (and related to the questions of the book as a whole).

3.5/5

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best kind of book for me is the one that leads to other books, to googling topics I’d never thought of before, returns to things I have already or also read, and the memoir underpinning all of it. I found this challenging in ways I didn’t expect.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is the difference between an intentional community, a commune, and a cult, and what are the similarities? Are they all attempts at creating utopia? Are they all doomed to failure? Can failure be recast as a measure of success? To keep prodding and plodding, check out Heaven Is a Place on Earth by Adrian Shirk. Stare out the window of daily discouragement at real or metaphoric dead trees, trash and traffic, and ask, Is this hell? Consider alternatives to hell. Ask whether “all movements that are truly pure of heart will die quickly and return to the compost heap” and what they can impart to us while they’re here. Learn from others who have tried and gained and lost and tried again, and let them bolster you as you proceed in “walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side.”

[AnSmellica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this was a pretty cool read. I truly loved her writing about utopian endeavors historically, contemporarily, and within her own life. There is a self-critical thread throughout the (widely meandering) narrative that keeps the author from crossing into extremes of naivete or cynicism. She wields a remarkable balance between awe and analysis, and that's what kept me reading- even though, at times, the essays feel a little disjointed in terms of narrative flow and my immersion in the stories was all over the place. Still, her writing is vulnerable, endlessly informative, and casually rides a razors edge of zealous and irreverent. I think any other critique I could really give, she already gave herself in the book. I'd definitely recommend this to people interested in the history/logistics/realities of alternative, radical (utopian!) communities.

[Maya Berger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this so much, I am definitely 100% the target audience here. So thought provoking and inspiring and interesting to read!

[Morgane]

DNF and won't finish it. Not really what I was expecting.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking at different society norms, seeing how things function and move was an interesting concept! Beautifully presented! I enjoyed it!

[Joanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

** Thank you to the author (Adrian Shirk) & publisher (Counterpoint) for my copy, won on GoodReads.**

It's so difficult to review the books I don't enjoy! This one was tough for me to slog through. Maybe I wasn't as curious about the concept of the search for utopia as I needed to be. I just didn't connect with the book or the author. She has a jumbly, meandering style which doesn't always bother me but for some reason I didn't like here. I don't think she ever decided what she was writing -- a memoir or a travelogue or a history or some combination? Whatever the intent, I had the impression she was hoping the book would write itself from her notes (and she even admitted as much on pages 4-5) which makes the whole thing seem unfocused and uneven. Sometimes she wrote about personal issues and unimportant details that didn't seem pertinent, and when she talked about her personal life I always felt like I was missing too much information to care about the point she was mentioning; other times she didn't include enough detail about something that WAS relevant. And there seemed to be too many different threads in the book as a whole.

So, bottom line... the book viewed as a loosely organized memoir or travelogue was something I couldn't relate to, and as a general survey of some U.S. utopia experiments that developed in the U.S. and are continuing to varying degrees today, it's more of a surface skim of the topic and I didn't find it engaging enough to recommend to others.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up. I really felt like this book needed more serious editing; I found so much of the author's overly personal writing distracting (her husband's alcoholism, their open marriage, endless mentions of smoking). I also felt like it rambled a lot and could have been better organized.
That said, there was some information I found very interesting, particularly about 1/3 of the way in when she mentions how she feels that white utopian communities in the US were "pale recreations of Indigenous life". I wish she had actually made an effort to meet some indigenous people and interview them for the book. She does mention the book "Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom" by Taiaiake Alfred, which is now on my to read list. Specifically, she mentions the intro to the book by Blackfoot scholar Leroy Little Bear, emphasizing the importance of place to indigenous life. Something I think about a lot, having moved around so much as an adult and longing to connect with a place.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shirk's book moved me deeply, bringing back scores of memories from my 1960/70s youth, pursuing collective living dreams of my own, and giving me such fascinating detail about American utopian/communal living efforts, past, present, and future. I appreciated the connection with the religious/spiritual, not because I'm religious or spiritual, but because it makes better sense of many of the motivations for utopian visions and efforts. "Heaven has meaning to me, especially in relationship to utopian experimentation on earth, because that's what it seems like--spiritually or materially--utopians are trying to bring into being in their comic and failed attempts." I also appreciated the links with anarchism, carefully analyzed. Referring to a proposition by M.C. Richards about solving collective relationship problems with creativity and precision, like making art, she writes: "Her proposition offers a way of creating non-hierarchical leadership without waxing about the virtues of 'non-hierarchical leadership', a phrase that once used seems to almost always signal the presence of a hierarchy, in the person, or institution, or teacher who is saying it." The writing is superb; personal, articulate, touching, amusing, revelatory. Thank you Adrian.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book to understand my own challenges in community building and thought that perhaps I could learn something from utopian failures and successes. Diving in without context, I expected something that read along the lines of a history book, something more encyclopedic than poetic. But time and again I learn that life needs more than intent, needing presence first and foremost. The book weaves through Shirk's own life, intentional life is about the interpersonal. She wanders from place to place searching, and I too contemplate my own search for home. I draw power from her insistence that life can be lived as art - thoughtful, intentional, and eternally unfinished. I have held a misperception that many of these intentional communities faded away as a hallmark of failure, and extending this idea further, that the left itself is study of failures. It is good to remember - her quoting Keno Evol following the conviction of Derek Chauvin for George Floyd’s murder - that starlight often isn't a part of the historical record. Permanence is not the point. Ultimately, understanding my responsibility to other people and to the land, plants, and animals is an evolving dialog. I liked this book.

[Jerad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crying tears of recognition of a fellow traveler within the first five pages, I knew I would love this memoir/study of groups of people who imagined a better way and went for it.

The theology was a surprise. Turns out the author is committed to Christian source material from her progressive Millennial perspective. Her memoir style involves a lot of personal reflection and invitation into what is occasionally the messiness of her own life. It helps you understand the nature of her questions and what is behind her own desire for utopian existence. Her effective communication could also position her experience as representative of a certain American subgroup with which faith communities also seek to be in deeper relationship.

The exploration of various present and historic utopian communities, the learnings gleaned from the author's attempt to live one out, and the embrace of the temporal and humanly finite while in pursuit of the Kingdom of God all make this book eminently readable. I can't wait to pass it on. It is a book for lovers of hope, dreamers and fools who believe that effort put into something beautiful but which doesn't last is not time wasted.

[Wes Dunn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like most if not all of the utopic communities it chronicles, this book started strong, and then petered out into something much more attenuated.
It was an interesting read at times, and Shirk combines a journalist's doggedness with a researcher's knack for connecting through-lines. But throughout, there wasn't a driving force that propelled this book anywhere close to something I'd recommend. There's nothing new for me in the takeaway that anarchy-communist forms of living have to strike some sort of devil's bargain with the capitalist society that surrounds and looms over them (see Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed"). And the interweaving of Shirk's own memoir, while occasionally interesting, mostly continued the trend that I should probably just accept - namely, that so many nonfiction books that make it to publishing are by and of and for a certain class of academia people. I get it - these are for the most part the kind of people who have the time and resources to write and read these kind of books... it just feels pretty insular.

[Lynne Fort · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book asks and inspires a lot of good questions about the nature of society and how we live. Shirk doesn't idealize the history of American utopian experiments but doesn't act like she has all the answers to the problems they were trying to fix, either.

I did find this somewhat inspiring, but there was one flaw that kept this from getting a 5-star rating (I would have given it 3.5 if I could). I found it impossible to get away from the fact that Shirk's own version of communal living is still pretty unattainable for most people -- to have a job where you can afford to buy and maintain a $280,000 house in the Catskills and can work completely remotely is available to pretty small percentage of people with very specific types of jobs. It's not her job to single-handedly fix all the unfairness of society, and to her credit she is self-aware. But given that the book is autobiographical, I kind of have to include her own personal utopian experiment in my assessment of the content and I think that does sour it a bit for me.

[Krysten · Rating 4 out of 5]

The premise of this book was super interesting and relatable to me: feeling burnt out under capitalism and isolated in a nuclear family house, and searching for real alternatives.

While this book did explore modes of communal living, like various intentional communities, it was pretty bogged down in meandering histories and cryptic personal musings. I had a tough time slogging through to parts that were more interesting to me personally (namely, how did these communities operate logistically?) Adrian Shirk's voice can at times veer into pretentious-private-college-sophomore, though for the most part she is humorous and validating, leaving the reader with apt reflections that are devastatingly common but socially unpopular to voice out loud. ("I am one of those people, who go to college and start careers and become couples and disappear into houses")

Overall, a fine read. Interesting topic and content, but with more fluff than nuts and bolts.

[bailey 💛✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was really interesting and informative. i’ve been really enjoying learning about new subjects lately, so no regrets reading this. i went in pretty blind though and while this is a mix of nonfiction and memoir, i found it to be a little heavier on the nonfiction which just didn’t work for me in this instance. i will say, this book got me thinking a lot about my own definition of “utopia” and the idea of communal living. while i don’t see myself joining a co-op or commune in the future, i’ve been focusing a lot this year on building community in real life, fostering connections with people around me rather than relying on social media to do all the hard work. part of being present also means putting more time and care into the relationships that matter most and i can 100% understand why communal living is so appealing in that way. i too would love to say fuck capitalism fuck social media fuck the patriarchy and just live the way i please, creating, collaborating and simply Being.

[ayana · Rating 5 out of 5]

ok wow - i kinda fell off reading for a second but this is easily my favorite book of the year & arrived in my life with what feels like divine timing. adrian shirk writes in this really uniquely rich, intimate weaving of personal memoir & history/research vignettes. lots of big questions about hope and future via communal living. also so much of this book was surprisingly about present and past NYC, specifically my neighborhood - there's a whole section narrating her life during/after pratt where she's living in a building maybe 3 blocks from mine??

did not want this book to end - even though by nature it's full of loose ends & failed projects, it felt like such a guiding star & stirred up so much reflection, curiosity, yearning for me :,) soooo good thank u adrian shirk

[Meilin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably my new favorite book. There are so many thoughtful lines about community and how we've centered and decentered belonging to a group of people. The historic and personal perspectives of the communes and utopias was great narrative building that made me sympathetic to the why.

I didn't expect the Jesus Slide that I saw everyday driving from KC to Independence to make a guest appearance or my other home Raleigh to have ties to utopias, but delighted to read about both.

There are so many good lines like who thrives in community and who goes to college, gets careers, and disappears into their homes that I was mentally highlighting. It made me think a lot and reread passages to get it, but also made me feel like I was getting a warm hug after a dinner party with close friends.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be both educational and fascinating. The author has written a series of essays that explore different types of utopian communities and intentional communities-both past and present. From her research into the history of these communities, she explores the roots of failures and successes as well as the evolution of these communities. Then she uses this information to look at how communal living may meet the needs of people today who are trying to survive and thrive in this age of individualism and broken systems of health care and capitalism. I have lots to think about.
An added bonus was that much of this book is set in my beloved Catskills.

[Ocean · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow! this book really exceeded my expectations. it's a truly wild ride, glowing in its sheer brilliance & audacity. this book made me want to live harder, write more truthfully (and i say that as someone who already writes very truthfully, in general), learn how to drive and wander the country, take more risks, read more books, take life and shake it. i learned so much, but one reading only scratches the surface. truly, this is something to come back to again and again. i'll be thinking about this for a very, very long time.

[Sarah Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

On one hand, this was rambling and privileged and annoying at times. On the other hand, it tied together so many things I have found fascinating about society and culture and history. I didn’t realize how many utopia-striving communities I’ve been aware of, or drawn to. The writing was beautiful and poetic. I found myself jealous of the author’s building a life out of the mainstream- and yet I can choose to incorporate what I will into the life I create for myself. Was torn between 3-4 stars but I like to round up :)

[Annie Windholz · Rating 5 out of 5]

New favorite author alert. Shirk uses memoir and travelogue to have a conversation with the reader about big ideas related to intentional community versus capitalistic isolation. Gonzo journalism style musing while moving through different communities with self reflection and external reflection- what I try to do with my own writing. I wish she had talked more in depth about more intentional communities in the country/ visited them. Love how she makes the reader think about how many other things are intentional communities with goals for utopia that we don't think about, such as the institution of marriage and forever. Edit to book: it's spelled 'Womontown' in Kansas City

[Lauren Camerer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was definitely a different genre than I typically go for, but I absolutely loved the mix of both Adrian’s personal experiences & her research findings and seeing how they weave together. This was very thought provoking— especially at a time in my life where I’m trying to figure out where to move, what community means to me, and so on. It’s the perfect time to start questioning what utopia means to me and what steps I can be taking to get me there. Would recommend.

[Sian Lile-Pastore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Loved the exploratory nature of it, the shared learning, the memoir aspect and the journeys it took, there is just so much in here. Sometimes I found the writing a little dense - so it did take me a while to read it.

[Ciara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the premise of this book. I really enjoyed the personal stories mixed with her experiences visiting various communities. She was authentic about her own privileges,
perspectives and biases. However, didn’t love the writing style. It was a bit too academic and I struggled to get through it.