...

???

I'm struggling to find the words to write about this book, because it made me feel so much. Jonny's sex life was full of matter-of-fact contradictions, but the way Whitehead writes about intimacy just really clicked with me. Jonny's relationships with his mother and grandmother were so full of tenderness, mistakes, and growth. And all the little details about the random people in Jonny's life gave the whole novel such vibrancy and color. I don't know how to say that this was one of the most impactful books I've read this year.

In the kinanâskomitin/gratitudes section after the novel, author Joshua Whitehead writes:

"In nehiyawewin, there are no masculine or feminine attributes, instead we have animations in which we hold all our relations. We are accountable to those kin, be they inanimate or non-human, or be they unabashedly queer, femme, bottom, pained, broken. We put our must (sic) vulnerable in the centre and for once I do just that: 2S folx and Indigenous women are centred here. I hold our relations accountable to us for once. Jonny has taught me a lot of things but there are two that I want to share with you: one, a good story is always a healing ceremony, we recuperate, re-member, and rejuvenate those we storytell into the world; and two, if we animate our pain, it becomes something we can make love to."