Building Belonging: Your Guide to Starting a residential Intentional Community
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Community is Yana’s comfort zone. Her work on social dynamics has come into maturity over three decades as she has lived, grown and worked with communities. This book is her give-back: a distillation of what she knows to make it work.
Building Belonging is both a practical guide for how to start a residential intentional community and a collective framework for addressing the racial, social, ecological and economic disparities affecting all aspects of the living experience for humans, land, and its co-inhabitants.
It offers an unprecedented perspective to creating intentional community that speaks directly to the reader who wants collective answers and who sees the deep benefit of community living as a key piece to addressing systemic issues. Yana brings wisdom and perspective from 25 years of intentional community experience and many years of training founders in starting intentional community. It is a give-back to the movement that nurtured Yana’s personal and professional growth for all those years, transforming her knowledge into a practical and honest guide unlike any other, uniquely built for its time.
The dream to create a more whole and connected life is one that awakens in people of all walks of life, with various histories and levels of access to land and wealth. The yearning to belong to a place and a people could be said to be inherent in our very nature.
Yana says, "One of my core beliefs in this work is that all intentional communities are doing culture change work. Any time we attempt deep cooperation with others, we are bucking our mainstream culture's trends, and that means we can very quickly find ourselves in over our heads. Drawing on the lessons learned from a whole movement of people who have been doing this work for many decades is a way to cut through the fog. I'm blessed to have gotten to work with some of the movement's most savvy leaders."
The Cooperative Culture Handbook: A Social Change Manual to Dismantle Toxic Culture and Build Connection… 26 Keys for Groups, Facilitators, Leaders, and Other Change Catalysts - with Karen Gimnig.
The Cooperative Culture Handbook was written with intentional communities, worker owned co-ops, Agile businesses and social change groups in mind. It distills 25 years of Yana’s work with cooperative groups into an accessible, nuanced and practical guidebook for anyone really committed to change, with the bonus of Karen Gimnig’s depth of experience working with couples and Agile groups.
What people are saying about Yana and Karen’s new book:
“The Cooperative Culture Handbook offers a clear and compelling alternative to the competitive society it seeks to replace. Written in simple and direct style, this book contributes to the emerging vision of a new society and inspires readers to join it. It should be read by anyone looking forward to the emergence of a cooperative culture in which everyone is equal and everyone thrives.”
Harville Hendrix, Ph. D. and Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph. D, authors of Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couplesand co-founders of Safe Conversations, A Social Movement
“Yana and Karen describe practical exercises to help groups engage authentically and create a positive culture. This handbook addresses social justice in a way that will challenge even the most progressive community.”
Crystal Byrd Farmer, author of The Token: Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization and FIC Board Member
Together Resilient: Building community in the age of climate disruption
Yana's 2017 book Together Resilient: Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption (published prior to her name change, and thus as Ma'ikwe Ludwig) won the 2017 Communal Studies Association Book of the Year Award.
Together Resilient looks at the current state of our economy and culture in relation to climate disruption, and also at the many practical examples of what is being done to address it, without waiting for government approval or everyone agreeing that climate disruption is even a real thing. With her usual humor, compassion and frank approach, this book brings the best of Yana's knowledge and creativity to the table to help us all think about what's next.
Here's what people have said about this book:
When people ask me where to move to escape climate change, I tell them there's no escape and that the thing to look for is a strong community. This book explains how to build that kind of community anywhere--it's a manual for the future.”
--Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
"Is it possible to jettison our current system of exploitation and environmental destruction, and create a new system, on a national scale, that is not only sustainable but affords us a comfortable and fulfilling life? The answer is a resounding yes. Ma'ikwe Ludwig eloquently reminds us how the way is fraught with challenges and shows us how to conquer them. This is a must read for anyone who cares about the future of the human race."
--Dr. Chong Kee Tan, founder of Bay Bucks
