I am incredibly excited to share the news that a book I am dreaming of writing has been acquired by the publisher I most longed to work with: Milkweed. Milkweed publishes extraordinary books—I really love them! This dream is many years in the making, with many years ahead! The soonest this book will be published is fall 2023, and much more likely sometime in 2024.
I am writing a collection of interwoven essays about my experiences with communal living, nontraditional households, and the people who I love and have challenged me in those settings. I’m also including windows into my family and friends who have experimented with group living. I want it to be fun, sometimes funny, sometimes uncomfortable, always vivid and visceral, like a conversation around a dinner table you don’t want to leave. Every bit of the book is anchored on people in my life. I think of it as a little imaginary group household in which each essay stands on its own but also fits with the others.
I have never thought of group living as a panacea. In fact, most people in the world live in communal households. The reason the book came to me is that several years ago I was feeling especially tender towards my housemates, and I started imagining a future when some might move away. Before they left, I wanted to get down details about them, their recipes, their jokes. I recorded a few audio interviews and started taking copious notes while they cooked. I realized that I am under the sway of group living—it’s a huge part of how I understand my life—and that is somewhat unusual among people my age. There are so many explorations of marriage, parenthood, even isolation. What about an exploration of group living—one not rooted in supposed utopian eco-villages or communes? In a very honest way, how did it shape who I am? What are its challenges, frustrations, and joys? There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to how we structure the central relationships in our life, which is why the nuclear family is a strange edifice that too often feels inevitable. As Anne Helen Peterson wrote, “I think I mostly just find attempts to naturalize the objectively bizarre parts of the status quo fascinating, no matter the form.” The flip side of that for me is that I find meaning exploring working examples of non-status-quo setups.
Someone asked me what my definition of group living is. Another friend, at an outdoor birthday party, fretted that he was not loving his roommate situation (with two very needy cats), but didn’t want to confess it to me since he believed I was a roommate proselytizer.
I haven’t finished writing my definition for group living. I do not think a bunch of dudes in a massive apartment complex in the Bay who share some laundry machines is what I mean when I say group living, although it is by design dense and semi-collective. I also don’t mean simply multiple people living under a roof, although I suppose that is quite literally group living. I don’t think everyone needs housemates. Sometimes I think about daily shared meals as a model for what I want to express: When we cook for and eat food made by other people, we practice giving and receiving. It’s a kind of shared breath that connects us to history. We are literally living, in the most sweeping sense of that word, together, and giving each other life.
Group living, then, to me, is about repetition, giving and receiving symbiotically, vulnerability, and non-romantic intimacy. Because I am taking an expansive view of group living, I see it in unexpected places: a group of friends making artwork to delight each other, day after day; mutual aid; mycorrhizal mushrooms. I’ll joke, “that’s group living,” in the same sardonic voice my brother uses when I leave the dishes undone, knowing the words themselves are a cliché, and for some people abrasive, but always express something that changes you and challenges isolation.
If we want to move towards a culture that prioritizes collective and planetary health, we need change at every level. Rearranging your household does not restructure the economy, abolish nuclear weapons, dismantle oppressive systems. I don’t believe in some bizarre Driving Miss Daisy or Green Book narrative—that when people from different worlds become “friends” our social problems are solved and the tyranny of isms are vanquished: racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism. But I do believe in action at every scale, and that includes the domestic. Home is a place where we get to practice how we treat one another, how we synthesize other people’s feelings and reactions, how we express affection, generosity, and discomfort. I hope this book gives people a vivid picture inside the homes and communities I’ve inhabited, for better and worse, and cracks them open to thinking about home, family, and their sense of self in a fresh way, however they live. I want to be a documentarian of contradictions and also tenderness and specificity. I want to share a piece of myself and my world that other people may not know, and in turn be receptive to other people’s stories and experiences.
As I move more into writing the book, I am transitioning this newsletter to every other week. This newsletter will continue to be my notebook and playground as I learn what stories I like to tell, what inspires me or catches my attention, and how my thinking is evolving. Thank you for being on this journey with me. I’m excited!! I’m also terrified. Humans are funny.
Well of course I am over the moon about it. Could a mom be more proud? OK as the middle child in a family of 8 kids, I feel addicted to group living. It is what I know but for sure don't feel like I do it very well. I am excited to see what evolves. to me group living is like wrestling worth humanity.
This is super news Lola!! Having lived in households of several configurations, and never having seen that as a topic or theme of a longer work of creative non-fiction - I’m so ready to read this book of yours.
Judy