The Freedom Shop Aotearoa

The Freedom Shop is well and truly well-stocked at the moment. Within the last few weeks we've had boxes of books arriving from AKPress, PM Press and Kersplbdeb - along with more treasures from BWB...   We've got David Graeber, George Orwell, Noam Chomsky, Silvia Federici, Angela Davis, Murray Bookchin, the suddenly famous Andreas Malm, the classic alt-Tintin volume Breaking Free and even a new edition of Thomas More's Utopia. We've got utopian AND dystopian Sci-Fi from Ursula LeGuin, Octavia E Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson, Vandana Singh, Eileen Gunn and John Shirley. There's something for everybody, and we haven't even got around to opening two of the boxes.  

Come and join a discussion about the new Bill The new Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill is before Parliament right now. It includes new detention powers against asylum seekers and also adopts the Australian 'no entry by boat' policy by discriminating against asylum seekers who arrive by sea. Western countries, like New Zealand, use refugees to make them look good but it's the western countries that are the primary drivers of the problems causing people to flee and then the same countries do their best to prevent people from arriving there.  Join us for a discussion about this bill and the bigger picture, the reality of western states policies to refugees and the constant erosion to the right of asylum. Thursday 20 April 6.30pm at Freedom Shop, 160 Riddiford St, Newtown

A box of books from Kersplebedeb in Canada is out on the shelves!  Silvia Federici fans will be delighted to see Caliban and the Witch is back in stock, along with three of her other books. Fiction fans can pick up B Traven's classic, The Death Ship , Ytasha L. Womack's Afrofuturism and Michael Mohammed Knight's cheerfully daft Islamic punk fantasy, The Taqwacores .  And we've finally got copies of Thomas King's The Inconvenient Indian , a brilliant intro to North American colonial and anti-colonial history and Michelle Cruz Gonzales account of feminist punk band Spitboy (they played a legendary gig at Thistle Hall in Pōneke back in the dark ages).  Plus stuff on Makhno, 1968, Frantz Fanon, anarchism in the Philippines, Bookchin and more! 

The Freedom Shop and Book Haven invite you to the launch of Splendid Bush by Clare Havell-Shufflebotham. Splendid Bush is a queer reckoning with love, its warpath, motherhood and ghosts (of capital, of violence, of sweet lemon trees). Part protection spell, part map of self-dissolution, this collection is an ode to hookgrass and an offering of dirt. The works are at times ruthless, at times tender nano-essays on the rebound, queer haunting, the parties you should have left, and all that you want to stay. This is not a break up album, although the greatest hits do make an appearance. Rather, it takes the wounds that motherhood lays bare, and produces queer nature magic as antidote and as mirror. Written in the crucible that is suburbia with young children, Splendid Bush questions the spaces between ourselves and ‘nature’, macho colonial bodies, violent bodies of the state, and our own. Above all, it is about the power of Bush. Havell-Shufflebotham arrived home to Aotearoa not long bef

It's here! Plan B for 2023 is out. It's the fifth year of the planner and as always, it is loaded with events and dates of those often ignored, overlooked, deliberately forgotten histories from Aotearoa. It is a planner featuring countercultural and radical histories.  As you plot and plan your way through 2023, you can be reminded of what has come before. This time around, Plan B was made in association with Zinefest and features stunning artwork from Daily Secretion commemorating events from the planner.  By popular demand the 2023 edition is spiral bound, black and white, and has one week to a spread with monthly highlights and monthly art. Copies are for sale at the Freedom Shop for $17 each or online from  Book Haven