Jonny Appleseed

Each person's discovery of gender identity is unique, but Two-Spirit, the way it's relayed here, I think it's important to recognize this is specific to a people, a culture, a spirituality. Likewise, Indigiqueer, queer and Indigenous, is an experience separate from how a white person might experience queerness or an Indigenous person might experience heteronormativity. 

The novel centres the idea of individuals holding various identities, the main character is a queer, sex positive sex worker, an Indigenous two-spirited person, who has grown up in a multi-generational family on a reservation, having left it as a new adult. He shares intimate ties to a friend who seems conflicted in his sexuality, has experienced government removal from family, foster care, both have experienced child abuse and continue to experience systemic racism.

 Telling the story of how those identities intersect in a quietly devastating, unflinchingly honest way, the writing winds back and forth between pragmatically explicit, poetically wistful, and embittered weariness. It reads like a memoir/diary, reflections and remembrances. 

There is a framing narrative, including inciting incident (death of step-family member) and goal worked towards (get money to get back to reservation, visit family, attend funeral) but it functions more as background to many pieces of the narrator and his friend's lives recounted, especially the narrator's relationship to two generations of female predecessors. 

The aching contrast between enforced colonialist views on gender and sexuality, notions of manhood and masculinity, under which some modern Indigenous peoples are still assimilated, in contrast to more traditional views which are more welcoming to fluidity, really hits hard. It makes Jonny's acceptance by his mother and grandmother that much more beautiful. 

I like that the book ends with the possibility that these characters cannot just survive, but possibly thrive, but it doesn't shrink from the reality that their identities disadvantage them in a world of intolerance and white privilege. It will require acknowledging what about their upbringing programming their current behavior may no longer serve them, while it is gentle about not necessarily framing any blame on parental figures rather than the system that let them down for generations. 

The introduction to the author's note of gratitude at the back feels like the perfect summary to the notes of brave, angry, mournful and accepting felt throughout the book. 

⚠️Pretty much all the warnings: 
Racism, homophobia, child abuse, binge drinking/alcohol dependency, SA, assault, fatphobia, body image issues (dysphoria?), definitely multiple unsafe situations, gets descriptive with multiple bodily fluids