Bernardo, Susan M.; Murphy, Graham J. (2006). Ursula K. Le Guin: A Critical Companion (1sted.). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-33225-8. Patricia Linton, "The 'Person' in Postmodern Fiction: Gibson, Le Guin, and Vizenor," Studies in American Indian Literatures, Fall, 1993, pp. 3-11. Utopia: Discussed, especially in the Framing Device when Pandora talks with a Kesh woman and complains about how "utopians" are a bother. The Kesh are at least partially In Harmony with Nature, wealth is determined by generosity, homophobia and sexism are minimized, and there is no need for police or an army, but there's also superstition, violence, and cruelty. La Résistance: The people opposing the Dayao rule, both from conquered territories and commoners of the city. Either "World Domination", or Something About Bananas: Played with a lot. The Kesh have very different conceptual divisions and metaphors than both the readers and the other cultures in the setting; which gives abundant opportunities for extreme misunderstandings — such as Terter Abhao, with Kesh as his second language, saying something that gets heard as both "you and I should go on a short walk" and "I need to depart with the army for years" depending on who is listening.

Arc Symbol: Heyiya-if, a hinged spiral reflecting the world view as described above, with the left arm representing Earth and the right Sky. The Kesh include it not only in things like their drawings; their cities are laid according to it, with the left arm containing living houses (in case of the largest town, several arms were needed), the right arm, the heyimas (multifunctional public structures), and the hinge being some sort of spring or waterfall. J. R. Wytenbroek, " Always Coming Home: Pacifism and Anarchy in Le Guin's Latest Utopia," Extrapolation, Vol. 28, No. 4, Winter, 1987, pp 330-39. I Owe You My Life: Inverted in the Valley, at least with medicine. A doctor who saves a person's life is considered to be the one in debt, being akin to a parent now. One doctor was forced to swap towns due to all the debts in the old place. In the new one, he concentrated on animals and terminal patients.Prophetic Fallacy: Stone Telling has a vision at one point of her father's corpse. When he shows up later, she believes her vision to be false, but later, when he helps her escape the Dayao people, she realizes it must have been a vision of the future. Unnamed Performers. “Papago: Girl’s Initiation Ceremony”. Indian Music of the Southwest. Folkways Records, 1957. Big Fields Villagers. “Song of the Green Rainbow (Papago-O’odham)”. Les Indiens D’Am é rique. Authentic Recordings. Frémeaux & Associés, 2014.

Elinor Armer, Ursula K. Le Guin. “Sailing Among the Pheromones”. Uses of Music in the Uttermost Parts. Koch International, 1995. When a Fictional Utopia Offers a Pathway Home” by Amy Kurzweil, The New York Times (13 August 2021) Upon reading Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin, one feels as though entering an anthropological museum filled with artefacts from a past civilization; we can discover maps charting where the Kesh lived, drawings and descriptions of the plants, trees and rivers that surrounded them; collections of recipes and descriptions of how they dressed; detailed notes explaining their society, kinship, sexuality, medicine and funerary rites; folk tales, plays, poems, stories and descriptions of rites and rituals, with detailed descriptions of what their instruments looked and sounded like. Ursula K Le Guin, "The Language of the Night." Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Susan Wood, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1979, 239 pps.Assesses Le Guin's theories of anarchy and Utopia. Shows how her ideas compare to the theories of primitivism. Mistaken for Gay: That was one of the possibilities discussed by the Valley people when they saw the Dayao army — for them, it was unimaginable that such a large group of people would contain no women. War Is Hell: For Kesh, war is idiocy, at least on the scale they are familiar with it (a dozen people fighting another tribe over some offense). Stone Telling, however, who had lived with the warlike Dayao, has learned and describes the horrors of war in detail. Playing Doctor: It is mentioned sexual games are actually encouraged among the Valley kids, so that by the age of ten, they tend to be well knowledgeable about contraceptives.

M. J. Hardman, "Linguistics and Science Fiction: A Language and Gender Short Bibliography," Women and Language, Spring, 1999, pp. 47-8.Meaningful Rename: People in the Valley tend to have three names throughout their lives; as children, as adults and as old people. The mother of Stone Telling was Willow as an adult, and once she broke up with Terter, demanded to be called by her childhood name, Towhee. It was considered an extremely wrong action which her daughter never accepted, and upon her death, she was mourned as Ashes. Stone Telling herself also had a fourth (or rather, second) name while living among the Dayao. Horny Sailors: "The Trouble with the Cotton People" has the teller claiming he had a lot of problems with that at one point during his journey. Relief was problematic, since the Kesh people tend to be careful about the possibility of STD, which are very rare among them, but not in other places. Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Stone Telling describes how, when the Dayao start suffering defeats and food shortages, a lot of their commoners start running away. She follows soon.

letter responding to the chapter about The Left Hand of Darkness in David Ketterer's book, New Worlds For Old: The Apocalyptic Imagination, Science Fiction, and American Literature, see Le Guin, Ursula K. (July 1975). "Ketterer on The Left Hand Of Darkness". Science Fiction Studies. SF-TH. 2 (6): 139. The names in Le Guin's novel are descriptive because they not only name the characters, but they also describe the characters' personalities or circumstances in life. Pandora, for example, is the scientist who puts the entire collection of artifacts from the Kesh society together. However, Pandora was also the name of the first woman, according to Greek legend, who released all the evil in the world. The name, Pandora, also means "gift." Pandora, the editor in Always Coming Home, is keenly aware of the historical significance of her name. The names of both the Kesh and Condor characters are metaphoric as well. Pandora admits near the end of the novel that she has been using the English "meanings" of the Keshian and Condorian names rather than their real spellings Le Guin does this for two reasons: one, she wants her readers to connect with her characters; and two, she wants her characters' names to reflect what her characters do.

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GMRC Review: Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin” by Scott Lazerus, Worlds Without End (3 January 2013)