The most influential mid-20th century feminist anarchist novel you've never heard of
5 Sterne
First things first: content warning for this book include sexual assault, emotional/verbal/physical family abuse, a few racial/sexuality slurs. These are mostly concentrated in the beginning of the book. One or two very minor spoilers ahead.
The book starts with Connie, a poor Chicana woman living in New York City in the 1970s, being involuntarily committed to a mental institution. At the same time, Connie is receiving telepathic communications from Luciente, a person who turns out to be from Mattapoisett, MA, in 2137. Luciente and per community believe Connie's time and place is a pivotal one, which is why they've reached out. At first Connie is suspicious and alarmed, but as she keeps contact with Luciente, she begins to understand and embrace their non-hierarchical, agrarian, techno-anarchist way of life, and to see this possible future as one worth fighting for.
That is the plot in a nutshell. The plot …
First things first: content warning for this book include sexual assault, emotional/verbal/physical family abuse, a few racial/sexuality slurs. These are mostly concentrated in the beginning of the book. One or two very minor spoilers ahead.
The book starts with Connie, a poor Chicana woman living in New York City in the 1970s, being involuntarily committed to a mental institution. At the same time, Connie is receiving telepathic communications from Luciente, a person who turns out to be from Mattapoisett, MA, in 2137. Luciente and per community believe Connie's time and place is a pivotal one, which is why they've reached out. At first Connie is suspicious and alarmed, but as she keeps contact with Luciente, she begins to understand and embrace their non-hierarchical, agrarian, techno-anarchist way of life, and to see this possible future as one worth fighting for.
That is the plot in a nutshell. The plot is not really the point, though; the point is the exploration of a post-capitalist, post-growth society which Piercy took pains to point out is not technologically out of reach, even in the 1970s. Aside from the artificial uteruses, most of the technology they use in 2137 is stuff we've had around for ages by now in 2026. The true innovation is in social technologies, in ways of organizing, educating, healing, making decisions about where to invest community resources, and so on. It is this fact, along with Piercy's use of the butterfly effect, where small actions can have large consequences, that lend the book its urgency and its relevance to contemporary problems and concerns.
The book does not leave the reader with certainty that Luciente's future will come to pass, or even whether Connie's contacts with Mattapoisett were anything but a hallucination. Nevertheless, the possibility of a world where people are truly free inspires Connie to resist the cruelty and oppression she was on the verge of becoming resigned to. That, and the chance that you, the reader, may become similarly inspired, is what makes this book so important and worth reading.