wildbutterfly | Pagebound

3d

Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (Justice, Power, and Politics)

Monica M. White

In May 1967, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.

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3d

Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City

wildbutterfly

Jun 23, 2026

Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City

3.5

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

i don't want to be a gardener (and the world i envision doesn't require everyone to be a gardener, or everyone to do everything!), but i did like hearing about all these different accounts of urban and small forms of gardening. i hope other people who read this take up the mantle of working towards more community gardens so we can better feed each other and ourselves in a cheaper and healthier way (for our pockets and the environment!).

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3d

Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City

Kate Brown

From the eighteenth century to the twenty–first, the surprising history and inspiring contemporary panorama of urban nurturing health, hope, and community. This manifesto for the next food revolution by acclaimed environmental historian Kate Brown speaks to nature lovers, food activists, social–justice warriors, urban planners, WOOFers, and the climate–concerned. Ever since wage labor in cities replaced self–provisioning in the countryside, gardeners have reclaimed lost commons on urban lots. They composted garbage into topsoil, creating the most productive agriculture in recorded human history, without use of fossil fuels. The ecological diversity they fostered made room for human difference and built prosperity, in Nazi Berlin, working–class gardeners harbored dissidents and Jews; in Washington, DC, Black southern migrants built communities around gardens and orchards, the produce funding homeownership. Grafting contemporary experience and concerns onto every historical chapter, Brown creates a mesmerizing hybrid past and present, archive and experience, showing how down–to–earth gardeners can reap abundant harvests while fostering mutual aid and political engagement.

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3d

wildbutterfly

Jun 23, 2026

Night of the Living Rez

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

i assumed they'd be disconnected stories (or at least with different characters) based on the synopsis and perhaps the first few stories but after all the stories with david and his friends, it becamse clear to me that all of these stories involved david. there was a lot of confusion for me because of how non-linear and disjointed the stories were, but maybe that's intentional given david's addictions and also trauma (especially since in that last story, he keeps reiterating how he's not sure if he remembers what happened, and that his mom doesn't really know or at least say what happened).

i think i wanted a little more solidity (i'm curious about paige but i feel like we don't get a ton of windows into her life), and even if they're supposed to be slice of life bits, i would have liked to be let into david's life a little more (although maybe he just can't?).

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3d

Night of the Living Rez

Morgan Talty

How do the living come back to life? Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy. In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and community bonds as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s projects the past onto her grandson, and thinks he is her dead brother come back to life; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs. In a collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance, Night of the Living Rez is an unforgettable portrayal of a Native community and marks the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction. Burn In a jar Get me some medicine Food for the common cold In a field of stray caterpillars The blessing tobacco Safe harbor Smokes last Half-life Earth, speak Night of the living rez The name means thunder

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wildbutterfly DNF'd a book

5d

Behind Five Willows

June Hur

From the New York Times-bestselling author of A Crane Among Wolves comes a warm and romantic homage to Jane Austen set in historical Korea, about a reader and a writer who secretly fight against government book banning and find themselves irresistibly drawn together. As the dutiful second-eldest daughter of a poor family, society would have Haewon believe that her only hope of a decent life is to marry well. But during a time of rampant government censorship and book banning, she instead works as an illegal book transcriber in order to make a little extra money. It’s dangerous work, but she loves it―especially when she gets to transcribe the work of her favorite author, known as Black Lotus. When her older sister becomes smitten with a wealthy young gentleman, Haewon is roped into chaperoning them during their courtship. Which wouldn’t be so terrible... if it weren’t for the young man’s uptight and annoying best friend who also accompanies them. As the only son of a noble, Seojun has a lot expected of him. Wealth. Status. Respectability. Certainly not frivolous and often illicit activities such as reading fiction. But Seojun loves to do something even more scandalous: writing. He’s kept his work secret from his father and friends, but with each passing day, the pressure of being his father’s son and the dispiriting actions of the government make Seojun question the purpose of it all. The only thing keeping him going are the encouraging letters he receives from his transcriber, known only as Magpie. When his best friend falls hard for a girl of lower social status, Seojun finds himself forced to act as chaperone to the infatuated couple―along with the girl's younger sister, who is as irritating as she is judgmental. But as Haewon and Seojun spend more time together, they begin to suspect they may have judged each other too quickly...

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5d

wildbutterfly

Jun 22, 2026

Casually Yours

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

it was fine. i think what stuck with me the most was how strange having parker's pov come in during the epilogue felt after not having it at all throughout the book. while i love a multi pov book, i think this would have been better with the epilogue in dani's voice to keep it consistent (or do dual through the whole thing, but that would be fairly different from the current novel).

i think i also wanted the reason why they stopped being friends to feel more dramatic but it felt kind of anticlimatic for me.

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6d

wildbutterfly

Jun 21, 2026

Meet Me at the Picket Line

Enjoyment: Quality: Characters: Plot:

i read and watch a lot of romance, and this book says that it's a romcom, and yet... i kind of wish this didn't have romance in it? there's already a lot happening, and the romance gets pushed to the side while everything else is happening. i kind of wish we got more lola and moms instead of efrain tbh

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6d

Meet Me at the Picket Line

Jasper Sanchez

Unionizing his job wasn’t on Eli Goldstein’s summer bucket list—but neither was falling for his irritatingly self-righteous and handsome school rival. Sparks fly on the picket line in this hilarious, coming-of-age rom-com that’s perfect for fans of Jason June, Page Powars, and A.M. Woody! All’s fair in love and solidarity... Eli Goldstein might be the only teenager looking forward to earning minimum wage at his objectively terrible summer job. Not only will he be working at the kitschy roadside museum he loves, he’ll finally have the down payment for his top surgery with a first-class surgeon. But the museum really is a late-stage capitalist hellscape, and Eli’s co-workers—led by his irritatingly self-righteous and annoyingly attractive school rival, Efraín—plan to unionize. With his sanity and safety at risk on the job, Eli knows he has to join their campaign. If he and Efraín can stop bickering long enough to keep their ragtag union together, they might actually have a shot. But when management begins to grow suspicious, Eli will have to make a choice: Is he willing to stand in solidarity with his friends and the boy he’s starting to fall for, even if it means risking his job and the key to his life-changing surgery?

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6d

Meet Me at the Picket Line