Jonny Appleseed

"This was a great, quick, raw read about a two spirit protagonist by a two spirit author, recounting coming of age on the reservation and a bit of life after moving away. We witness trauma, personal and generational, love, prejudice, loving support, grief, all presented as is, this is a life, warts and all"

"this book was beautifully written, it touches on so many subjects, and the emotions displayed were felt on so many levels. the ending made me cry"

"This book is a great look at the life of a native and it's nothing like you are expecting. It's real. I am an Indian ( native, first nation, whatever makes you comfortable) but I grew up with the white side of my family. Sometimes that makes me feel less "authentic". Like I shouldn't be able to claim that part of me. This book made me feel a little more connected. It was also funny and intriguing and just very well written"

"Decided to tap at 70%. This is an important, rare voice in writing. I want to hear this perspective but the style of narration makes keeping up with time shifts, character's placement and situation and the important moments all very difficult. I'll probably try to finish this later but for now, I'm calling it."

"What this book is about: Sex, two-spirit, sex work, poverty, life under colonialism, Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strong family relationships, homophobia and homophobic violence, love (familial and romantic), lower class tastes and problems (lower class mixed with colonialism of course in this case), alcohol and cigarette overuse, life on Peguis First Nation in Manitoba. It was good to read once. But I don’t know if I will read it again. I think first I need to know more about it. I’ll watch some of the Canada reads discussions about it on YouTube. It was good and everything, but there was a lot of poverty, violence, and I don’t know if I want to read so much about sex, at least repeatedly as a book I re-read. Clearly Jonny is a strong character in many senses. He (they? I don’t recall any discussion of good pronouns) is in very difficult structural circumstances. Perhaps he does what he can. But for books I re-read, I like to read about more of like worldly achievements? And not so much about substance addiction and sex. I still have it on my best 100 novels list because I don’t know any other realistic stories of two-spirit people dealing with the issues of the modern world and this shows that. It is important as a work of two-spirit literature. My experience of it just doesn’t make me want to re-read it. He struggles so much with his romantic relationship and doesn’t seem to have aspirations beyond surviving. I understand that this is indicative of the very difficult structural position that many two-spirit people find themselves in. But for a book I re-read I like for the main character to have larger goals. I realize this is a hetero perspective to some degree, since as a cis hetero person I don’t have to deal with all the violence that Jonny does. But still, I am a cis hetero person, and talking from that vantage point, I want to re-read novels where the author achieves larger things and the book isn’t so much about sex & substance abuse. a "

"Well written and poetic. But anticlimactic and kind of pointless. Jumped around a lot between past and present but the connection between the two is weak at best. Leaves the reader unsure due to the loose ends, weak plot, and seemingly meaningless plot points that do exist."

"Honestly I thought the whole thing was great"

"fantastic!! fast paced, raw, deeply emotional. "