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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik
Original language
English
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JONNY APPLESEED

Joshua Whitehead

A tour-de-force debut novel about a Two-Spirit Indigiqueer young man and proud NDN glitter princess who must reckon with his past when he returns home to his reserve.
Jonny Appleseed is a unique, shattering vision of First Nations life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams.
"You're gonna need a rock and a whole lotta medicine" is a mantra that Jonny Appleseed, a young Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer, repeats to himself in this vivid and utterly compelling debut novel by poet Joshua Whitehead.

Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Self-ordained as an NDN glitter princess, Jonny has one week before he must return to the "rez"--and his former life--to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The seven days that follow are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother). Jonny's life is a series of breakages, appendages, and linkages--and as he goes through the motions of preparing to return home, he learns how to put together the pieces of his life.

Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of the novel Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018), longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks, 2017) and the winner of the Governor General's History Award for the Indigenous Arts and Stories Challenge in 2016. Currently he is working on a PhD in Indigenous Literatures and Cultures in the University of Calgary's English department (Treaty 7).
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Published 2019-05-15 by Arsenal Pulp Press (N-A)

Comments

With only seven days until he returns home for his stepfather's funeral, Appleseed spends a pyretic week attempting to reconcile the competing factions of his life: sex, friends, work, sex, family, identity, sex. Throughout, memories of his kokum (grandmother) intrude upon the chaos, and these unexpected moments of remembrance prove most striking. A radically original new voice. -Booklist

Jonny Appleseed is a miraculous achievement of a debut novel. -Canadian Art

Jonny Appleseed breaks rocks and crafts them into good medicine for folks like Jonny, who might be looking to see themselves reflected somewhere, and for whom this visibility might even mean survival. As Whitehead weaves Jonny's resonant experiences and complex identity into a compelling journey, we might also consider why stories such as his are so rare when Jonny is so willing to bring us along for the ride. -Winnipeg Free Press

Every so often, a book comes along that feels like a milestone, with revolution nestled beneath every sentence, every word. Oji-Cree/nehiyaw two-spirit/Indigiqueer writer Joshua Whitehead's Jonny Appleseed is one of those books ... With its fluid structure and timelines, Jonny Appleseed creates a dream-like reading experience -- and with a narrator as wise, funny and loveable as Jonny, it's the sort of dream you don't want to wake up from. -The Globe and Mail