JONNY APPLESEED (Book Review)

By Joshua Whitehead

 

 

(Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018)

 

 

 

It’s interesting that the front cover of this book expressly notes that this is “A Novel.” So often, as I read the anecdotes, I felt certain they were mined directly from the author’s actual experiences. We writers do implant much of our lives into our fiction, but things seemed particularly real here. To the extent the anecdotes are imagined, then it’s high praise to Joshua Whitehead that they came off feeling like memoir. 

 

The fact that I used the word “anecdotes” twice in the opening paragraph is intentional. The novel comes off as a series of vivid vignettes which jump all over the place in time and place. To the extent there is an overarching plot, it involves the titular character earning enough money to make it back to the reservation where he grew up so that he can attend a funeral. The stakes don’t feel high and there is no suspense about whether he or won’t get there on time. 

 

It’s a meandering journey from beginning to end. Sometimes the weaving of past and present plays out in a series of alternating paragraphs. Not my thing, but I appreciated what the author had set out to do. Other times, I’d completely forget that Jonny was trying to get back home since there’d been so many digressions. This might be intentional. I’m no expert on First Nations storytelling, but a quick Google turned up some information about there being a non-linear tradition which also reminds me of some stories I heard from Elders when I lived on BC’s Sunshine Coast on the traditional territory of the Squamish and Sechelt First Nations.

 

What makes this novel compelling is the voice. Jonny identifies as a 2S (Two-Spirit) NDN (Indian) who has left the rez in rural Manitoba to make a go of living in the big city, in this case Winnipeg. Whitehead’s writing makes a strong case for the importance of #ownvoices telling stories from a minority perspective. The slang and the inclusion of terms from First Nations languages enrich the novel. 

 

A couple examples from random page flips provide a sense of the flavor:

 

The house looked like the ones on the rez, two-storeys, an off-green shade, and two windows on the second floor that look like eyes. We always thought our houses looked like Oscar the Grouch’s—maybe they were like that everywhere? Do all rezzes look the same? Like some NDN Sesame Street?

**

 

            I bought a pack of Pall Malls for ten bucks, took one out, and lit it up. That feeling of relaxation came over me, the kind that burns your throat but makes you feel like you’re back home even if you’re hundreds of miles away. A good cigarette is like a familiar story. A Nate [Native] saw me spark one up and made his way over to me. 

            “Hey cuz, can I bum a light?”

            “Oh yeah, sure.”

            “Oh hey, can I bum a smoke too?”

            Damn trickster, I thought, someone’s taught him well.

 

 

Jonny is frank about his life and what his chances are in making it off the rez. His primary source of income comes as a sex worker, typically through a form of online show and tell but also from meeting in person. I’ve never been a fan of having a main character be a queer sex worker. In the past, I’ll admit to being a judgmental prude, but that’s not the case anymore. People are advantaged and disadvantaged. They do what they can to make ends meet. However, the queer sex worker is a cliché in gay fiction. (I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that a guy I dated more than twenty-five years ago read gay fiction almost exclusively. Every time I’d see a new book in his car or on the nightstand, I’d ask, “What’s the name of the gay hustler?” He’d frown, but there was always one. Maybe it made for more interesting reading than a story about the gay antiques dealer or the gay florist.) 

 

Thankfully, the sex work is not the core of the novel. There’s as much talk about the amount money he needs to earn from his vocation as there are details of the job and, combined, it’s still minor part of the story. (I'm glad I kept reading after coming across what may be the worst sentence I've read all year. Describing a dream, Whitehead writes, "Bees buzz around (a lilac), their wings slicing through the air, their bodies velvet smooth in a way that reminds me of how I like to shave my pubes." WHAT? It appears, ironically, on page 69. Whitehead is a much better writer. I feel the editor should have stepped in and said, "Um...just no.") Jonny’s connection to a few prominent characters lends heart to the story. Above all is his loving relationship with his kookum (grandmother) who unequivocally accepts Jonny along with his feminine tendencies from when he was a young boy. He is who he is and she couldn’t love him more. A petite woman, kookum is not to be messed with, except by her own daughter, Jonny’s mother. Both women are prone to drink too much—Jonny, too—but his mother is more of a work in progress who often left the parenting to Jonny’s grandmother. His kookum instills a strength in Jonny, including a sense of pride in indigenous beliefs and traditions. 

 

The other prominent relationship is with Jonny’s childhood friend on the rez, Tias. There’s a casualness to the sexual intimacy between the two men, a natural part of the love between them. Jonny would likely choose Tias as his partner for life, but Tias likes women too and his intimacy with Jonny, while beyond being an experimental phase, comes off as impermanent. Jonny will take what he can get, knowing that Tias is connected to his girlfriend, Jordan, and that Tias will likely opt for a more conventional straight life. In the hands of another writer, it might be easy to judge Tias, even dislike him, but he’s genuinely trying to live his best life, very much wanting Jonny to be a part of it. Yes, it’s complicated as is most everything for the characters in this book.

 

Many vignettes are delightful such as an account of Jonny having to work in a group as part of a class “Culturama” project in elementary school. Why learn about his own heritage when a report on Sweden is what is assigned? A bossy group member rejects his first version of rice pudding—there’s always a food element in these reports on foreign countries—so his mother figures out how to meet the Swedish standard. 

 

“Heck, they eat reindeer? Maybe we have more in common than I thought,” she said. When she flipped to the last page, which was about the Swedish tradition of blood pudding, she started laughing… “Here, m’boy. I have just the thing.” 

 

After the bossy girl tastes the revamped recipe, she screams, “This tastes like shit!” However it tastes, it leaves its mark on the girl’s tongue. “It’s not just red,” I told her. “It’s NDN red.”

 

There are memorable tales about encountering a bear in the street, stumbling upon a dead porcupine and the two boys being caught wearing nail polish by Tais’s stepfather. The tone of each differs remarkably. 

 

Whitehead doesn’t whitewash life on or off the rez. There are bleak aspects to both but there’s also a strong sense of survival, of loving people despite their flaws and of holding on fiercely to what makes one unique as a culture, as an orientation, as an individual. 

 

Jonny Appleseed is a novel that will stick with me. I’m sure a second read will bring more to light. I look forward to following Whitehead’s literary career.