Making Love with the Land

JOSHUA WHITEHEAD is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of the novel Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press), which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award in Fiction, and the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks), which was shortlisted for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award for Most Significant Work of Poetry in English and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. Currently, he is working on a PhD in Indigenous Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary's English department (Treaty 7).

The boundary- and genre-bending non-fiction collection from the Giller-longlisted, GG-shortlisted and Canada Reads– winning author of Jonny Appleseed.

“The land and its elements are my aunties calling me home, into that centre point which is a nowhere, by which I mean a place that English has no words for, is an everywhere, is a bingo hall, is a fourth plane, is an ocean.”

Making Love with the Land is a startling, challenging, uncompromising look at what it means to live as an Indigenous person “in the rupture” between identities. In these ten unique, heart-piercing non-fiction pieces, award-winning writer Joshua Whitehead illuminates the com­plex moment we’re living through now, in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are navigating new and old ideas about “the land.” He asks: What is our relationship and responsi­bility towards it? And how has the land shaped ideas, histories, words, our very bodies?

Intellectually thrilling and emotionally captivat­ing, this book is a love song for the world—and for the library of stories to be found where body meets land, waiting to be unearthed and summoned into word.