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A review by millennial_dandy
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead
4.0
'Jonny Appleseed' is a fabulous example of just how much the intersectionality of identity drives our lives, and how the push and pull between them can sometimes be incredibly painful.
"Funny how an NDN "love you" sounds more like, "I'm in pain with you." (88) This is a novel dripping in the melancholy of that pain.
Our narrator, Jonny, has an incredibly strong voice, brimming with quintessentially Millennial sardonicness to cover some pretty deep wounds. Despite his closeness with his grandmother (Kokum) and his mother, his unapoligetic queerness alienates him from most of the men on the 'rez' and as a young adult he flees to the nearby city of Winnipeg where he gets involved in sex work to make ends meet.
In Winnipeg we follow the tragic love triangle betweem him, his childhood friend, Tias, and Tias's girlfriend as they all try to find their way despite the microaggressions and overt racism they experience.
For a debut novel, some of the thematic background work in 'Jonny Appleseed' is incredibly subtle. The term 'generational trauma' never comes up explicitly, and yet its specter haunts every one of our main characters in ways they ultimately can't seem to escape.
As a child, Jonny's Kokum rejoices at his light skin and against his mother's wishes, allows him to get a haircut like Tom Cruise. But despite this attitude, she is also the one who raises Jonny on the stories of their tribe and through whom he is imbued with a sense of connection to their culture.
And boy is author Joshua Whitehead not shy about illustrating just how much colonialism shredded that cultural sense of self, and still does.
This is a beautifully written story, and though there are moments where the poetic style verges on purple prose, much of it is so gorgeous that you can forgive it that.
There is a meandering, dreamy quality to the chronology and reveal of information that won't be for everyone, but given how short the novel is, I didn't find it difficult to nevertheless follow the main narrative thread, and indeed, because this style was incredibly consistant I found myself sliding into an almost fuge state just reading it.
A very talented, fresh voice in queer literature. I'll happily read whatever he comes out with next.
"Funny how an NDN "love you" sounds more like, "I'm in pain with you." (88) This is a novel dripping in the melancholy of that pain.
Our narrator, Jonny, has an incredibly strong voice, brimming with quintessentially Millennial sardonicness to cover some pretty deep wounds. Despite his closeness with his grandmother (Kokum) and his mother, his unapoligetic queerness alienates him from most of the men on the 'rez' and as a young adult he flees to the nearby city of Winnipeg where he gets involved in sex work to make ends meet.
In Winnipeg we follow the tragic love triangle betweem him, his childhood friend, Tias, and Tias's girlfriend as they all try to find their way despite the microaggressions and overt racism they experience.
For a debut novel, some of the thematic background work in 'Jonny Appleseed' is incredibly subtle. The term 'generational trauma' never comes up explicitly, and yet its specter haunts every one of our main characters in ways they ultimately can't seem to escape.
As a child, Jonny's Kokum rejoices at his light skin and against his mother's wishes, allows him to get a haircut like Tom Cruise. But despite this attitude, she is also the one who raises Jonny on the stories of their tribe and through whom he is imbued with a sense of connection to their culture.
And boy is author Joshua Whitehead not shy about illustrating just how much colonialism shredded that cultural sense of self, and still does.
This is a beautifully written story, and though there are moments where the poetic style verges on purple prose, much of it is so gorgeous that you can forgive it that.
There is a meandering, dreamy quality to the chronology and reveal of information that won't be for everyone, but given how short the novel is, I didn't find it difficult to nevertheless follow the main narrative thread, and indeed, because this style was incredibly consistant I found myself sliding into an almost fuge state just reading it.
A very talented, fresh voice in queer literature. I'll happily read whatever he comes out with next.