Grass Fed Cooking

Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From A Consumer Culture

By Shannon Hayes

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Mother Nature has shown her hand. Our planet is on the verge of climatic catastrophe; the fossil fuel that drives our industrialized economies is running out; animal and plant species are facing extinction; social injustices are rampant. At long last, Americans have grown conversant in the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crisis: stop driving our cars; consume less; increase our self-reliance; buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities.

What we have been afraid to articulate, however, is that at its core, the great work we face requires sweeping out our hearths and lighting the home fires.

Radical Homemakers is a book that looks at men and women across the United States who have opted to focus their lives on home and hearth as a political and ecological act; who have chosen to center their lives around family and community not only for personal fulfillment, but as a way to bring about cultural change. It explores what domesticity can look like in an era that has benefited from feminism; where domination and oppression are cast aside, where the choice to stay home is no longer equated with mind-numbing drudgery, economic insecurity, or relentless servitude.

Radical Homemakers from across the country speak out about their personal empowerment to bring about true change, find genuine happiness, to cast aside the pressures of a consumer culture, and live in a world where money loses much of its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity.

Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture will be published by Left to Write Press and distributed by Chelsea Green. It is due out in the Spring of 2010. To receive notification of its release, please click here and leave your name, address and email.

Shannon Hayes, Ph.D. is the host of grassfedcooking.com, and the author of The Farmer and the Grill and The Grassfed Gourmet. She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York.

Calling all enlightened homemakers!

Did you or someone you know opt to sidestep a traditional career path to put your family and the planet first?

For my next book project, I am looking to meet and profile folks who have learned to live on less in order to take the time to nourish their family and the planet through home cooking, engaged citizenship, responsible consumption and creative living. Enlightened homemakers can be male, female or two people sharing the role, full or part-time. Enlightened homemakers may or may not have children. Send me an email and tell me about yourself or someone you know. Please put "enlightened homemaker" in the subject heading. Thanks!