Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin
"Always Coming Home" by Ursula K. Le Guin is a rich narrative that explores the lives of the Kesh tribes in a future California, juxtaposing two distinct cultures: the Valley People and the Condor People. The Valley People live in harmony with nature, practicing communal leadership and valuing equality, especially among women. In stark contrast, the Condor People have a more hierarchical and urban society, where women's roles are significantly restricted, and slavery is present.
The story centers around Blue Owl, a girl from the Valley, who grapples with her identity and familial connections when she is drawn to her father, a Condor warrior. As she transitions to life in the Condor city, she discovers the oppressive nature of its culture, leading to her eventual return to the Valley as Woman Coming Home. This journey illustrates themes of cultural contrast, personal freedom, and the importance of storytelling.
Through her experiences, Woman Coming Home not only reconnects with her roots but also emphasizes the significance of her unique story, documenting her life through an interplanetary computer known as The Exchange. Le Guin’s work invites readers to reflect on societal structures, gender roles, and the quest for identity in diverse cultural landscapes.
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Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin
First published: 1985
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction
Time of plot: The future
Locale: Kesh
Principal characters
Stone Telling , a young woman of the Sinshan tribeWillow , her motherTerter Abhao , her fatherPandora , the first woman, according to Greek mythologyThe Valley People , a near-utopian society in CaliforniaThe Condor People , a warlike societyStone Listening , Stone Telling’s husband
The Story:
The tribes of Kesh, a country in what is now California, live a fairly rustic existence, but they have access to a variety of technological apparatuses. One apparatus, an interplanetary computer called The Exchange, provides information to anyone who knows its programming language, TOK. Additionally, the tribes have battery-powered flashlights and motorized boats, and tribal supplies are carried by train from town to town.
The Valley People live in a virtual utopia, holding sacred seasonal ceremonies and existing in cooperation with the land. The Condor People, a warlike group that once had been nomadic, live in a central city and worship a single deity, the Condor. Where Valley women are completely free and equal, Condor women live in cloistered harems and are not permitted to learn how to write. Where Valley People share communal leadership, the Condor answer to one man and hold slaves who were not born to Condor families. Where the Valley People are rural, the Condor People are urban and consider the Valley folk rustic.
One story emerges as central to understanding the differences between Valley and Condor folk. Blue Owl of the Blue Clay Tribe in the Sinshan Valley lives with her mother and grandmother, thinking she is “half a person” because she does not know her father. When she is nine years old, her father, Terter Abhao, a Condor Person from the north whose name means “kills,” arrives with his army to spend time in the valley. After he leaves, Blue Owl’s mother, Willow, who had thought he had come to stay, changes her own name back to her childhood name of Towhee and withdraws from the family. In Valley culture, this reclaiming of an old name is considered going against nature and liable to be dangerous to the changed person. Thus, when Terter Abhao returns when Blue Owl is fourteen years old, his daughter begs him to take her with him and asks him to rename her.
Blue Owl and Terter ride to Terter’s home city. Blue Owl, now Ayatu, learns that Condor women lead conscripted lives, and she now regrets her decision to leave her mother’s people. She finds the city stifling and, as her father loses favor in the eyes of the Condor, finds her family losing importance. She is assigned a servant who teaches her how to survive in the harem and who comes with her when she is married off as a second wife, a pretty wife, to another family. Ultimately, she has a daughter and, before he rides to his own death in a canyon, Terter helps Ayatu and her servant and daughter escape from the Condor People.
Ayatu then chooses her own name, Woman Coming Home, and teaches her servant and daughter how to be free. She returns to find little changed in the Valley, but agrees that her story is important, since no other Valley folk have ever gone to live among the Condor and returned. She records her biography with The Exchange. She cares for her somewhat delusional mother, Towhee, who has turned even more inward, possibly because she went back to her old name. Woman Coming Home helps her friend establish herself in this new culture. When Towhee dies, Woman Coming Home renames her mother Ashes and participates in her ritual cremation.
Woman Coming Home meets a Valley man, and they become lovers. Because of her experiences among the Condor, she is initially unwilling to marry, but she ultimately consents, and the two enjoy a peaceful existence with her daughter; they have no children as a couple. A friend marries one of Woman Coming Home’s cousins, and the two families ultimately move to separate homes. Woman Coming Home changes her name to Stone Telling, and her husband changes his name to Stone Listening. She begins telling her story to researchers from another place and possibly another time, maybe the present.
Bibliography
Bernando, Susan M., and Graham J. Murphy. Ursula K. Le Guin: A Critical Companion. New York: Greenwood Press, 2006. A good starting place for those interested in Le Guin’s works. Offers detailed analyses of her literary style and a transcript from a 2005 interview with the novelist. Includes a brief biography and an essay concerning Le Guin’s place in the “literary genealogy of science fiction.”
Cadden, Mike. Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults. New York: Routledge, 2005. Examines Le Guin’s influential role in the development of popular and literary fiction. Discusses how her work often transcends its assigned genre. Includes the chapter “Always Coming Home: Childhood, Children’s Stories, and the Child Reader.”
Dooley, Patricia. “Always Coming Home.” Review of Always Coming Home, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Library Journal 110, no. 15 (September 15, 1985): 93. One of the first reviews of the work. Shows the contemporary public response, in terms of both its unusual configuration and the then-unprecedented use of interactive technology.
Hostetler, Margaret. “Was It I That Killed the Babies? Children as Disruptive Signifiers in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home.” Extrapolation 42, no. 1 (Spring, 2001): 10. Explores children as nearly alien forces who often exist in contradiction to the order of things in Le Guin’s novel.
Kelso, Sylvia. Ursula K. Le Guin. Vashon Island, Wash.: Paradoxa, 2008. Although slightly more difficult to obtain than some Le Guin criticisms, this work offers a comprehensive examination of the author’s career and philosophies, especially as these relate to her writing.
Oziewicz, Marek. One Earth, One People: The Mythopoeic Fantasy of Ursula K. Le Guin, Lloyd Alexander, Madeleine L’Engle, and Orson Scott Card. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2008. Argues that the works of fantasy authors, including Le Guin, have socially transformative power, giving expression to a worldview based on the supernatural or spiritual.
Reid, Suzanne Elizabeth. Presenting Ursula K. Le Guin. New York: Twayne, 1997. A critical biography aimed at young adults. Provides a good introduction to Le Guin’s fiction and examines how the events of the author’s life have helped to shape her work.
Rochelle, Warren. Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin. Liverpool, England: University of Liverpool Press, 2001. Analyzes Le Guin’s construction of myth and her use of mythological themes in her work.