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Dangerous Compassions

The Wanderground

Ming

Hello, reader–how are you doing?  You know how you read some books when you were young that shook your world and changed you forever?  For me The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart was one of those books.

I read this speculative fiction when I was a teenager–like most of what I read at the time, I found it at the local used bookstore.  It blew my mind because it was lesbian separatist, post-apocalyptic, and I had encountered nothing like that in all my years.  The visions of this book nourished me like nothing else to the point that I sort of worshiped this book.

Utopia, community, post-apocalyptic danger, and much gender.  The questions were just what I needed at the time, in the early 1990s when I went to a school that didn’t have even a Gay-Straight Alliance.  Queerness was swept under the rug– almost entirely denied and ignored, if not used as a silent reason for violence.

I used to have tons of spiritual, emotional post-apocalyptic dreams and nightmares.  This book The Wanderground must have fueled them.

movie

Well, guess what.  Now I live in community, and my queer dreams still fuel my visions for a world of respect, mutual aid, and shared liberation for all of us.

Many people read The Wanderground, and it’s still assigned in school classes.  I don’t know how much I would like it if I read it nowadays.  But last year there was a documentary made about the author called Sally!  And if all goes well, I might watch the movie tomorrow at the local university.

I don’t watch movies very often, but this one might be special.  I’m curious and open to whatever I might learn about this visionary writer, scholar, teacher, and activist who affected the course of my life.  I feel very grateful to her, and I’m excited that Ming and I have a chance to see the movie for free.

The only problem is that the movie is playing right after a medical appointment.  I’m planning and praying that I will be capable of doing a thing, after potential medical trauma.

questions for discussion
  • How do you recover from an intensely stressful appointment?

For you it might be a tax thing, a work meeting, asking for a change in an important relationship.

  • How do you prepare?
  • What book most affected you when you were young?
  • What drives you to work toward liberation?
  • How are your post-apocalyptic dreams?
  • Are there common themes?

Mine often involved hiding and running, threat of death from authorities, trains, parking garages, queer love, trying to resist brainwashing, health struggles, and psychic damage.

  • Where are you at with gender?
  • What’s the last documentary you saw?
  • Do you still have a lot to learn?

By Laura-Marie

Good at listening to the noise until it makes sense.

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