Qtopia
Regular price
€18.99
1970s
A01=Juda Bennett
Author_Juda Bennett
autobiography
back-to-the-land
Category=DNC
Category=JBSJ
Category=JPA
Category=NHTB
communal living
commune
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
forthcoming
free love
gay
hippie
Lavender Hill
LGBT
LGBTQ
LGBTQIA
memoir
seventies
Product details
- ISBN 9780299357047
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 26 May 2026
- Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In the 1970s, while communes bloomed like wildflowers across the land, most had no room for queer members. The so-called counterculture still clung to heterosexual norms, even as it preached freedom from traditional gender roles and the nuclear family. Juda Bennett’s engrossing memoir follows his escape from suburbia into the back-to-the-land movement—and chronicles the efforts it took for him to “drop back in” to mainstream society and the ways in which he and his compatriots continued to honor their communal vision.
After enduring the hollow promises of “progressive” communes, Bennett finally found what he didn’t know he was looking for at Lavender Hill, a rural queer commune of visionaries carving out a life beyond heteronormativity, beyond capitalism, beyond shame. They didn’t just survive; they built something messy, luminous, and defiantly alive. And when the commune began to unravel, they didn’t vanish. They evolved. Qtopia is a story of chosen family and radical transformation. It is a reminder that queer utopia isn’t behind us—it’s still out there on the horizon, singing its song of joy, defiance, and fabulousness.
After enduring the hollow promises of “progressive” communes, Bennett finally found what he didn’t know he was looking for at Lavender Hill, a rural queer commune of visionaries carving out a life beyond heteronormativity, beyond capitalism, beyond shame. They didn’t just survive; they built something messy, luminous, and defiantly alive. And when the commune began to unravel, they didn’t vanish. They evolved. Qtopia is a story of chosen family and radical transformation. It is a reminder that queer utopia isn’t behind us—it’s still out there on the horizon, singing its song of joy, defiance, and fabulousness.
Juda Bennett, a professor emeritus of English at the College of New Jersey, is the author of four academic books and numerous essays, short stories, and poems. He is a co-author of the group memoir The Toni Morrison Book Club.
