Author(s): HAYES, SHANNON

Current Affairs

RADICAL HOMEMAKERS is an inspirational book featuring stories of people who've cast aside the pressures of a consumer culture and quit their jobs to live a simple life of self-sufficiency. It presents a slow revolution quietly spreading throughout the United States. Couples are deciding to reject the treadmill of high-pressure living and its never-ending consequences of expense, consuming and commuting - and opting instead for a simpler life. The parallels with what is happening in Australia are clear and fascinating. Interviews with 20 men and women reveal how they achieved independence and happiness and redefined the good life by adhering to simple principles of family wellbeing, self-sufficiency, sustainability and community engagement. RADICAL HOMEMAKERS is about men and women across the US who focus on home and hearth above consumption and corporate life, who have centred their lives around family and community for personal fulfilment and cultural change. It explores what domesticity looks like in an era that has benefited from feminism, where the choice to stay home is as much a political statement as it is an ecological act.