anishinaabekwereads's reviews
183 reviews

Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction by Joshua Whitehead

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Love After The End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, edited by Joshua Whitehead, is the kind of story story collection that I want to push on everyone.

A speculative fiction anthology, it looks to queer Indigenous futurity with hope, love, strength, and survival. In the introduction Whitehead discusses how, for Indigenous peoples, we have already lived an apocalypse. This collection seeks to answer, how do Indigenous peoples, particularly those of us who are queer and/or Two-Spirit continue to live into the future. More importantly, the authors show how there is no future, Indigenous or otherwise, without us.

As with all anthologies, there are some stories that hit harder than others, but when I finished I felt a profound love for all of them. The way authors maintained queer and Two-Spirit Indigenous belonging even as the world was dying, was a comfort I needed in June when I read this.

It's also reassuring to know that I'm not the only Indigenous person who, if given a choice of leaving earth or staying, I would want to stay.

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

“I am fluent in water. Water is fluent in my body --

it spoke my body into existence.

If a river spoke English, it might say:

What begins in water

will end without it

Or,

I remember you ---

I cannot forget

my own body.”

Excerpt from “exhibits from The American Water Museum,” by Natalie Diaz in Postcolonial Love Poem

When people tell you Diaz is A Voice, listen to them. I had heard great things about When My Brother Was an Aztec, but I never got around to reading it. Isn’t that always the case? Well I picked up a copy of Postcolonial Love Poem in July and continued to bide my time, putting off what I feared would be a ground-shaking experience. It was. Truly.

Diaz crafts such incredible poetry I don’t know how to encapsulate my thoughts into a tidy caption review. This is the kind of collection you tab up, you highlight, you speak quietly to yourself over and over again, craving the flow of words. Her words are shattering, glowing, tight-fisted and soft-lipped. Her ability to craft yearning in the reader, an insatiable hunger for more, is power. What’s more, there were so many parts of this collection where I felt myself. For me, so much of poetry is about feeling things fiercely. Poetry that elicits such visceral feelings is truly love, is the poet’s heart and soul held out vulnerable as they ask the reader, too, to be vulnerable between the lines of their words. Postcolonial Love Poem does that for me on a deep level. I keep flipping back to “I, Minotaur,” to “exhibits from The American Water Museum,” “From the Desire Field,” “They Don’t Love You Like I Love You,” and, well, honestly the whole thing.

Hao: Stories by Ye Chun

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Ye Chun's Hao is a stunning debut collection of short stories. I have rarely read such a cohesive short story collection. Ye has crafted a stunning, emotional, and vibrant collection about how different Chinese women navigate life, particularly as mothers and women who seek to be mothers. It is sincere and soft and sometimes (okay quite often) painful and uneasy. Each story still tumbles around in my brain as different examples of the complexity not just of motherhood, but of Chinese womanhood.

I can't give you any favorites because I loved them all so much. I will say that the final story, "Signs," is a perfect close to a deeply emotional collection.

**** Thank you @catapult for this copy for review ****

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz

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challenging emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I listened to Dantiel W. Moniz’s short story collection Milk Blood Heat in August (thank you @librofm for the ALC!) and I think I have to declare this my summer of excellent short story collections. Milk Blood Heat focuses primarily on Black girls and women in Florida and Moniz laces each story with examinations of the sharp yearnings of their girlhood, womanhood, and motherhood. There is no small amount of grief in this collection. Many of these stories are heart-wrenching, many left me feeling unsettled in the carefully crafted ambiguousness of their endings. As readers we are made to sit with characters’ immense pain, loneliness, and uncertainty.

There’s the story about the mother and daughter who are working through their guilt and anger over an affair. A woman recounts the death of her friend in childhood. Another recounts of the loss of a child due to miscarriage while her stepdaughter looks to her for attention. A pair of siblings journey with their father’s ashes. Pretty much every story is about loss, the pain and struggle amongst family, and the ways one walks through grief even if it makes no sense to anyone else. However it’s not all sadness. Many stories are tinged with knowing, of working through fears and anxieties.

Listening to this on audio definitely shaped my experience. Unlike many short story collections I’ve tried to listen to on audio, this one, narrated by Machelle Williams, felt seamless. Though I don’t remember story titles, I found each story standing on its own, felt little difficulty in tying together larger themes throughout the collection, which, in my short story audio-listening experience, is no small feat.

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

In May, Stephen Graham Jones released an essay called “Open Letter to the Cons from the Indians No Longer in the Background of a John Wayne Movie” (really recommended, by the way) and in this short but profound piece he asks a question I’ve seen him ask us all to consider before. Instead of “who is your favorite Native writer?” why are we not asking “who is your favorite writer” which can include Native authors? Now Jones presents this question in the context of questions or comments Native authors experience at panels at cons (and honestly anywhere), but this question is a valid form of inquiry for any one at any time when engaging with writers who are Indigenous.

What does this have to do with Jones’s forthcoming My Heart Is a Chainsaw? Well it reaffirmed for me that Jones is one of my favorite writers. His writing style is not for everyone (seriously it can be very flow of consciousness) and the gore represented in so many of his books (SO MUCH GORE) probably turns a lot of people away from his work, but I have never been so captured by an author’s ability to create a scene, an atmosphere, a feeling of waiting for the next jumpscare if you will.

Now is My Heart Is a Chainsaw a new favorite book? Well, no. I liked it, I did. But, for me, it wasn’t my favorite. This novel is written for those who love slashers. You know the films: last girl [standing], a villain who is maybe human, maybe not, with a slow but steady method of racking up the body count, lots and lots and lots of death. The main character Jennifer (Jade) Daniels is a recent graduate of her small town high school in Proofrock, Idaho and everything is absolutely hate-worthy. The place, which she has a kind of love for, rejects her oddities. Her peers are too predictable. Her abusive father and his creepy predator of a friend are real life horror. Jade has spent her life wishing and hoping that a slasher would come to Proofrock. When a new girl who lives in Terra Nova, the new rich enclave across Lake Indian, moves right before graduation Jade is positive that Letha Mondragon is the final girl and finally (finally) things are being set in motion.

Here’s the thing. This novel is an ode to slashers. Jade’s massive understanding of the genre pulls you through much of this novel. Though there are deaths throughout, they’re not exactly harbingers of what most casual viewers will think of as slasher, except for the prologue which is very Friday the 13th meets Jaws meets what the hell is in this Indian Lake water. Yet there’s a clear undercurrent of anxiety, of discomfort throughout this that really shows Jones’s skill. The horror in My Heart Is a Chainsaw is slasher, but it’s also honest-to-goodness real life. There are monsters all around us. The people we expect to be the monsters might not be and the ones we know are monsters, but convince ourselves, protect ourselves from naming are the ones who need exposure.

I can already pinpoint why people won’t like this book. 1: it’s too slow. A lot of the action doesn’t happen until the final third or so of this novel. I felt like this was fairly evenly paced and I appreciated knowing what was inevitably coming because this is a Stephen Graham Jones book. If you’re hesitant or feeling like you might not finish, I beg of you to keep reading. The ending is pure slasher gold. 2: it’s not really about Indigenous people. Let’s re-reroute to the beginning of this review. Now, let’s think about how Indigenous authors don’t owe you tropes, stereotypes, or expectations. I know Native girls like Jade. I, in many ways, was a Native girl like Jade. It’s not all powwows and sacred teachings. Sometimes we just cope with trauma and also obsess over gorey movies just like anyone else. 3. It’s too gorey. This is obviously opposite point number 1 and I want to end of this one because Stephen Graham Jones knows gore. His books are not horror lite. They are visceral. If you cannot do gore (squishiness, blood, body parts, animal death, rot, etc.) you should probably not read this book. Jones does have others that aren’t as graphic. I always recommend Ledfeather.

All in all, I liked this book a lot. It was the kind of summer read I needed. It’s got a lot going for it, especially if you like your horror slasher-y. For me, it wasn’t my absolute favorite by Jones, but it reaffirmed my adamant declaration that he is one of my favorite authors. I could write a completely different review about being an Indigenous reviewer reading an Indigenous author (and I did for The Only Good Indians last year), but really my love of his work transcends that. This man has a skill and devotion to his craft that is so tangible in My Heart Is a Chainsaw. And like I’m sure Jade would say, some films (or books) are better than others for whatever purpose they serve when we watch(read) them. This is being filed away under: “remember this one. Who knows when it will come in handy.”

A final note that may not be strictly necessary: this book has a lot of content warnings.

Content Warnings

Sisters of the Neversea by Cynthia Leitich Smith

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adventurous dark funny hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

**** I received a finished copy for review from Harper Kids.Their new imprint, Heartdrum focuses on Indigenous voices in children's literature. ****

Disclaimer: I have never read Peter Pan. I have only seen Disney’s version once as a kid. I don't really care about Peter Pan, because believe it or not negative representations actually make Indigenous youth feel really awful.

If there's one thing baby Sasha would have wanted growing up, it's Cynthia Leitich Smith's new middle grade novel Sisters of the Neversea. This Peter Pan retelling by the Muscogee Creek author was a joy to read. We follow Lily, a Muscogee Creek 12 year old, Wendy, white stepsister, and their brother Michael as they journey to Neverland and fight to find a way back home.

This book's Native representation is literally everything. As someone who was an anxious, mature, and skeptical Ojibwe pre-teen, Smith's Lily felt like looking in a mirror even now. The "Indians" in Neverland were Native youth, diverse as all of Indian Country is: Cherokee two-spirit, Black Seneca, Muscogee Creek, Ojibwe. What's more, these characters so effortlessly provided the perspective of Indigenous youth.

Sometimes it might seem overly political, too "on the nose." That doesn't make it an unrealistic representation of Native kids, who are intuitive, smart, fierce, and vocal. Native kids have to combat negative rep and horrific stereotypes every day. They learn early that they might not be considered "real Indians" or that their families will be discriminated against or that people will always want them to play a certain role, fulfill someone else's expectations. Seeing Native characters push back against those very expectations is powerful.

This is clearly a middle grade book. There are some spots that provide quick redemption or resolve some conflicts perhaps a little too easily, but I recognize this book is meant for younger readers who may not feel the same way. The pacing, the language took me a few chapters to get into mostly because I don't often read children's literature. Still, once I picked up the rhythm, I found this absolutely charming and was deeply invested in the fantastical adventures and reunification between Lily, her little brother Mikey, and her (step)sister Wendy.

If you have young readers in your life, consider getting your hands on a copy of this. It's fun, theatrical, filled with sibling love, friendship, fairies, merfolk, pirates, and a baby tiger. This might be best suited for self-guided, mature readers (10+ years) as there is discussion of death (including animals), though I think the subject matter could lend to some good conversations.

CW: transphobia and misgendering (problematized by author), racism, racial slurs against Native Americans; mentions of murder, death, animal death.

Little Big Bully by Heid E. Erdrich

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5.0

Reading Heid E. Erdrich’s Little Big Bully, I felt that familiar tug of "reading, pausing, re-reading, finishing, re-reading" that I associate with truly engaging with poetry. There is so much in this short collection. Bittersweetness, anger, exhaustion, and “sovereign love.” There’s humor, sharp wit, and grief. There’s reckoning. It is uneasy.

Honestly this entire collection is brilliant and beautiful and thought-provoking, so choosing favorites feels like an impossible task. Nevertheless, here are some that I ended up tabbing and underlining the most: “All Nations,” “Fauxskins,” “The Pacifist Grows Mean,” “Aftermath,” “The Eighth Fire,” and “Reprieve.”

The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

“I studied the patience of the red oak so perfectly formed over many years, as she endured the cold. In the fall, she prepared by pulling the energy of sunlight belowground, to be stored in her roots, much as I preserved the harvest from my garden. Through a season that seems too cold for anything to survive, the tree simply waits, still growing inside, and dreams of spring. Without fully understanding yet why I had come back, I began to think it was for this, for the slow return of a language I once knew. The language of this place.”

Diane Wilson’s The Seed Keeper is honestly one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Filled with loving descriptions of prairie lands, of woods, of rivers, of gardens growing in a midwestern summer, I felt the call of that landscape. I could envision the heat, the power of storms, the coldness of a winter in what is now that state of Minnesota. I need to say from the outset, that I am not Dakhota. The history in this book is not my history. Even histories of boarding schools vary between Dakhota and Ojibwe people because we were not exiled from our homes. Still, this book felt like a call to those parts of me that still need to heal from trauma inflicted through colonialism. I love this book with my whole heart.

Following a nonlinear (though sometimes quite linear) timeline, we follow Roaslie Iron Wing, a Dakhota woman who is reeling from compounded loss. She was taken from her family and community as a child, raised in a foster home where she felt alone and unwanted, left to fend for herself and find a way to survive a world that holds onto anti-Indigenous hostility. Important to this story is how her family survived the US-Dakhota War of 1862 and boarding schools, though not without the scars of intergenerational trauma.

We see Rosalie return home to her family’s land and we watch as she rebuilds connections to a family she didn’t know had sought her out for years and to a community she didn’t feel she belonged to. This story is also about rebuilding and protecting Dakhota connections to lands, to trees, waters, and plants. It’s a novel about coming home, about healing even if the path isn’t entirely clear.

The most stunning parts of this novel demonstrate the intimacy and love Dakhota women have with seeds that sustain their families and Dakhota culture. Wilson beautifully demonstrates how important seeds are to everything else, how caring for seeds and the earth they grow in is a practiced act of survival for Indigenous peoples as evidenced through the protection of such seeds themselves.

I was at a talk Wilson gave a couple of years ago and she talked about this book, about how there were these stories of Dakhota women carrying their seeds with them to Fort Snelling where they were incarcerated after the US-Dakhota War and to Crow Creek and Santee after Dakhota people were legally and physically exiled from their homelands. She talked about how Dakhota women would sew seeds into the hems of their skirts. It was at that moment I knew this book was going to be such an essential literary contribution. Dakhota history is not easy and Wilson reminds of this consistently, but there is strength and beauty and love in Dakhota survival.

Content Warnings

Smashed: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

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dark tense fast-paced

4.0

The artwork in this collection is stunning and terrifying. I had heard that Junji Ito's work really creates physical discomfort and I have to wholeheartedly agree after reading Smashed. The horror stories were wide-ranging and I was absorbed in all of them.

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

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challenging emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley is everything I needed as a teen. It reflects mino bimaadiziwin, shows how Anishinaabeg continue to live as Anishinaabe, how I continue to try to live my life as Anishinaabekwe. It does not shy away from the difficult truths of contemporary Anishinaabe life. In fact, Boulley carefully tracks some of our biggest hurtles towards resurgence (read: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson). Yet this novel is good medicine in written form, a kind of healing that so many Indigenous youth need.

Daunis Fontaine isn’t much like me. I don’t play hockey. I didn’t grow up on the reservation. I didn’t grow up with regular access to elders who carried our knowledge. My interaction with Anishinaabemowin was mostly words and phrases. Yet in so many ways I felt reflected in this book. I saw my own insecurities about not being “Ojibwe” enough, saw my own anxieties that I wasn’t speaking enough, wasn’t doing things “right.” And that too is a lesson we see in this novel that I really could have used in my teenage years.

Listen, the hype about this novel is real. It’s funny and sincere and painful and gripping. It’s devastating and beautiful. The cousins, the friends, the aunties are going to be so recognizable to Indigenous readers. The meals, the surroundings made me just a little homesick. And though the ending nearly ripped me apart, I turned that last page and the tears pressing behind my eyes were of pride and contentment. Is it possible to feel like you know a fictional character so well that you’re proud of them? I don’t know, but I do know that Daunis represents so many kwezensag and kwewag and each of us is moving towards a future in which we continue to survive and thrive.

****I received an eARC from the publisher for early review.****

Content Warnings

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anishinaabekwereads's reviews 183 reviews

anishinaabekwereads's reviews
183 reviews