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CW: Homophobia, racism, misogyny, child abuse, and sex work are all explored within this novel Jonny Appleseed, by Joshua Whitehead, is an intense and multifaceted novel which explores many themes, topics, and identities, but in a way which gives all of these elements the room they need to be explored. Be it an exploration of First Nation identity, of queerness, of being Two-Spirit, or of being a sex worker; be it a reflection on pain and suffering, and the love and hope which can be found in those dents, or the intersection of the sacred and the sexual. I should start off by noting that I am a cisgender white man and this novel tackles many topics which I haven’t dealt with, and while I do have marginalizations of my own I have no personal idea of how the particular identities in this novel intersect. While it is important to talk about and advocate for people in these communities it is also imperative that we listen to their voices as well. I’ve tried to represent the story and themes using as much textual support as I can, but as an outsider I will doubtless make some mistakes or inadvertently display some sort of unconscious settler influence. I will try to prevent spoiling any major plot points, but I would advise that you read the book before this review/blog post and encourage you to read some of the other reviews written by FMI writers. I will include a list of several such reviews at the end. Jonny Appleseed is about Jonny, a gay Two-Spirit Oji-Cree man from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba who works as a cyber sex worker in Winnipeg. The novel’s plot serves as a sort of framing narrative for an exploration of its themes and the past and present of the characters, following Jonny as he attempts to scrape together enough money to return to Peguis for his stepfather’s funeral. In the seven days prior to the funeral the plot points interweave between past and present and through time and space in a non linear fashion. The novel is a challenging read, both structurally and thematically, but this structure is very effective at conveying the plot and themes. There is a particular emphasis on the relationships which Jonny has with the women in his life, especially his mother and his kokum. Whitehead, in the Afterword, says that “in nehiyawewin...we put our most vulnerable in the centre and for once I do just that: 2S folx and Indigenous women are centred here” (221), and as such the novel focuses on multiple generations of strong Indigenous women as much as it does Jonny. This is one of the most important elements of this work; it represents and explores experiences and intersections which are rarely presented in media (Two Spirit people, sex workers, First Nations women, indigiqueer people, and First Nations communities). Though representation is important, it does not in and of itself make a piece of literature good. However, Whitehead’s novel is great. It is well-written and evocative in its prose, and masterfully explores complex themes like the fluidity of identity, the importance of community, and the meaning of home, all while illuminating many of the issues facing indigenous bodies, cultures, and communities. The novel is quite thematically heavy at many points, but there are also moments of genuine love and laughter, and the idea of laughter as medicine is accepted with sincerity. The novel is heartbreaking and devastating and it lacks a happy ending or any sort of resolution (it just kind of ends), with bleak imagery such as a “holy hell of apocalyptic shitstorms” (195), dreams of large crushing waves that rip apart skin and never cease (34-35), and “serving face in the basement of a reservation death camp” (46). But it also revels in finding beauty in ugliness, love within pain, and the sacred within the profane. The prose is very blunt and matter of fact, unconcerned with sugarcoating reality or pandering to the comfortability of the reader. I think that this is a good thing, we shouldn’t feel comfortable about the realities which the novel presents. This bluntness is evident as soon as you read the first sentence: “I figured out that I was gay when I was eight”. He talks about disliking his name since he was named after his father who left him as a child and because of vivid memories of singing a song about Johnny Appleseed at a Christian summer camp: “I wanted to know about Louis Riel, Chief Peguis, and Buffy St. Marie, but instead we were honouring some white man throwing apple seeds...I would bet my left nut that he was a slave owner too and planted his apple seeds on Treaty territory” (11). Jonny himself does often seem to have a cynical and disaffected view of society, which is hardly surprising considering his life experiences, but this sharpness is blended with love and sadness and care for the people around him. At one point a broken collarbone leads to a fight between his mom and kokum, and it leaves him with a “dent in my clavicle, wide enough to contain both of those women’s many tears” (54). When a loved one dies he prefers to tell stories and laugh instead of cry, viewing “every piece” of himself as “a bundle of medicine that gives and burns and smudges” (109). He is jaded and broken, not just from his personal experiences but also from the intergenerational trauma that runs through centuries of genocide and oppression; “something inside me had been broken for years, if not centuries” (110); but he also understands the importance of stories as a method of healing and wants to help those in his life who are also broken in whatever ways he can. This theme of stories as healing is a persistent concept throughout the novel. Jonny makes sense of his life and crafts meaning through the stories he has consumed. The stories which he uses to help him understand his life come from many sources, both First Nations and white. His kokum tells him stories of wendigo and Nanabush alongside scary ghost stories and UFO hunting; he dreams of riding thunderbirds through crushing waves and of Whiskey Jack, while also imagining himself as Elle from Stranger Things “holding weights much too heavy for little girly-boys” (21-22). He finds strength and bravery in the stories of Cree chief Mistahimaskwa and Claremont’s X-Men alike. As previously discussed, Jonny deeply understands the healing power of stories, funnelling his grief at the death of a loved one into the constructive power of storytelling, but he also uses this medicine on himself. He also discusses the transformative aspect of storytelling, such as with his friend’s stories of his foster dad. Jonny muses on “how much power there is in stories--they can transform an alcoholic, child-beating sonuva into a saintly man who loves and gives annually to Unicef” (111). And, in a sense, he works as a storyteller, creating “an entire world for clients that fits your body and theirs” (25), appealing to their fantasies and concocting identities and narratives for them. Identity, and its mutability, is a very prominent theme in Jonny Appleseed. In the Afterword Whitehead states that “In nehiyawewin, there are no masculine or feminine attributes, instead we have animations in which we hold all our relations” (221) and the reader can see how this idea of identity as a fluid, unfixed thing that shifts and transforms depending on the contexts and relationships in which it is performed informs the novel’s depiction of identity. Jonny talks about how he “went by a hundred different names” (9) in school, and how he has had to perform different iterations of himself to survive in different contexts. He “played straight on the rez in order to be NDN” and in Winnipeg “played white in order to be queer” (44), and so he has learned from a young age to express different aspects of himself at different times for different purposes. His method of surviving is to “shift when you need to--become your own best medicine” (44) and in a sense he not only tells stories as medicine, but he also transforms his body into stories. This ability to transform is not a wholly negative or positive thing, at least from my interpretation of what Whitehead is expressing, and while it can be restrictive and constraining, it can also be magical, and freeing, and sexy. During his first homosexual encounter he is struck by the man’s “magic, how he shapeshifted his body in the dark” (17) but in the same chapter is also disturbed by how his eyes seem to undergo a wendigo-like transition. As a sex worker he indulges in how he “can inhabit so many different personas while the client can only be one” (26) but is also restricted by his clients, who want and expect him to embody First Nations stereotypes for their fetishistic enjoyment or as a way for “hipster shamans who collect crystals” (18) to legitimize their surface level appropriation of the diverse spiritualities that constitute the First Nations. He sometimes has to pretend to be an Apache cowboy scalper “though truthfully, I’m Oji-Cree” (25), or pretend to be “Chief Wansum Tail” (20), but he is also able to use these prompts to change his identity and explore its mutability in a way that allows him to profit off of the restrictive and offensive stereotypes imposed on him. In his work there is restriction but also freedom and creativity in terms of identity. There are also other difficulties in his identification, since he is often forbidden from inhabiting two separate identities at once, “there are a million parts of me that don’t add up, a million parts of me that signal immodesty. When I think of masculinity, I think of femininity” (79). His identity is complex and even contradictory, from a surface perspective, and while it changes and evolves based on the situation and the person, all of these different parts are still a part of who he is. I find this to be a very refreshing and intriguing exploration of identity; as something which is suspended within a network of relations and which is non-static and iterative. In conclusion, I would highly recommend this novel. I should note that there are several relatively explicit sexual scenes, which I know could make some readers uncomfortable, but I would still recommend trying it out. I also want to make it clear that Jonny is not meant to be a definitive voice for the communities he is a part of, his is just one of many narratives to be told and respectfully listened to. Reviews of Jonny Appleseed by First Nations/Indigenous Writers: https://canlit.ca/article/two-takes-on-jonny-appleseed/ Dallas Hunt is a Cree writer from Wapsewsipi in Treaty 8, Amei-lee Laboucan identifies as Black and Indigenous and is from Treaty 8, and Jennifer Hardwick is a scholar of Indigenous literature. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/reviews/article-review-jonny-appleseed-is-about-love-in-all-its-messy-forms/ Alicia Elliott is Tuscarora. http://www.malahatreview.ca/interviews/whitehead_interview.html This is an interview with Joshua Whitehead about the novel. Not a review but still an interesting read. https://alllitup.ca/books/J/Jonny-Appleseed#overview This page contains the editorial reviews on the back of the novel, most of which were written by FMI authors. https://www.instagram.com/p/BsOyzrnn0Xu/ This is an Instagram book review by Dani Sally-Anne, who is Red River Anishinaabe. https://www.instagram.com/p/CFhcpNUAHYp/ This is another Instagram review written by Floury Words, who is Lummi. https://www.instagram.com/p/CEJL_CGACtt/ This is a review by Melitta Jackson, who is Yurok.
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Algoma Reads as a Research Project8/23/2017 Algoma Reads Blog Archive 2017Hello everyone! For this week’s blog post, I would like to look more closely at the academic side of Algoma Reads. This course is both a community and an academic project, meaning that there are different aspects to both of these components of the project. The last few posts have been spent in discussing how this course is reaching out into the community in order to get as many people involved as possible. This post however, will look more at Algoma Reads as a research project.
As this course is being offered for the first time in the fall, there are many things that need to be observed and studied in order to make changes for up and coming years if the program is to continue. Think of the first run of this course as the pilot episode of a TV show – feedback is required in order to make any adjustments that will ensure the project is achieving its goals. The same is true with this course, or any new course for that matter. In order to do this, a large variety of data must be collected and analyzed. Part of what must be considered in doing this, is the ethics of the research project. If anyone has completed the TCPS 2 Core training, you will know the importance of proper data collection and storage. You must be careful in collecting data from individuals because they have to be fully aware of what your intent is with the information they are providing you before they consent. For example, a part of the course will likely consist of students keeping journals. In the journal they can include things like:
The ethics of the research project must be maintained if it is to be taken seriously. We must also be careful with the kinds of questions we ask and how we word them to get the sort of answers we want. We have to ensure that we don’t ask questions that may be damaging to the course or the school as a whole. For example; it would be improper to ask something like: Who was your least favourite speaker at the public lectures? Not only could this harm that speaker’s reputation, but it is also entirely unethical to ask this question. A better way to phrase the question would be something like: Which public lecture was your favourite? Which was your least favourite? Then you are keeping the speaker out of the equation and simply asking questions about the lecture and how it could be improved for coming years. The ethics of the project is simply one of the issues we must consider as we study the project’s efficacy. In order for the study to be successful, we also have to trust that the students will give honest answers to things like questionnaires and interviews, which is why it is helpful to have student volunteers as students are more likely to open up to other students, rather than a figure of authority. This, though, is an easy fix with the hire of student assistants and volunteers. While there are many hoops to jump through in order to create a successful research project, the project has started smoothly because much data collection is built into social media platforms and that data is already helping us to assess community involvement thus far. We hope that the project will provide insightful feedback to make future Algoma Reads courses meaningful, popular, accessible, and an excellent learning experience for all. As always, thank you for stopping by and be sure to check us out on Instagram @AlgomaReads and on Facebook. Written by: Hailey Buckley
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Algoma Reads Blog Archive 2017 Being an English major student means more than just reading books. One of the first things that I learned was how language could be used to construct and deconstruct meaning, to bridge gaps and create them. The relationship between language and speakers is two-fold—the closer I look and the harder I read, the more aware I become that language is using us as much as we are using it. For this reason, among many others, literature is also a study of criticism. The Canadian poet and man of letters, George Whalley, would call it “criticism as a getting to know.”
Reading Company Town was refreshing after spending a semester with the likes of Orwell’s 1984 and Gibson’s Neuromancer, which both left me with a strong, metallic aftertaste. Company Town was much lighter. Science fiction serves a purpose in the world of literature, although contested by some authors, to create thought experiments and premonitions of the future. Company Town contained hints of both 1984 and Neuromancer, but with the additive of Canadian thought. Hwa’s desire for privacy is combated by the Lynch technology, which smacks off the Orwellian “big brother.” Her life and struggle as an organic human in a society fueled by implants and augmentations to sensation and appearance is a clear response to Gibson. Without dismissing history, Ashby is commenting on the passage of the human into the post-human in a Canada that is centered on industry, the unionized worker versus the corporation, and synthetic humanity versus organic humanity. One striking difference between Ashby and Canadian writers of the past, such as Susanna Moodie, is the absence of the sublime. The closest thing readers get to this concept is Hwa’s impression of the ocean that surrounds the rigs as terrifying, endless, and oddly beautiful. The Canadian landscape is gone from Company Town, save moments where it is described in passing—this could not be a more provocative statement. Hwa’s experience moving from a union to a corporation is met with hostility on a local level. Those she worked with or for saw it as a betrayal of loyalty. This represents class struggles and the tug-of-war between nationalism and globalism; what it means to be Canadian versus what the world wants of Canada. Another critical aspect of the novel, right off the bat, is Hwa as the visible minority. A Korean-Canadian, tough-as-nails heroine who is not afraid to roundhouse the opposition, who also happens to be the pure, organic character. Not only is this inclusive of Canada’s multicultural society, but I could not help but think of Kogawa’s Obasan as a possible intertextual reference for this reason. It seems that Ashby’s decision to make Hwa a multi-cultured individual might stem from the mistreatment of minorities in the past. Company Town, while not a local favourite of the Canada Reads booklist, is most certainly a book that speaks to Canadian issues and politics. Ashby is warning of a decentralization away from our origins in the landscape and the sublime and into industry and corporation. Maybe we should listen to her. Written by: Ashton Carter |