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.

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 coauthor of the group memoir The Toni Morrison Book Club.

Davy Knittle is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Delaware. His first book, Urbanist Desire: Queer and Trans Survival in the City, will be published by University of Minnesota Press in November 2026.