Love after the End
CBC Books | | Posted: August 31, 2020 9:44 PM | Last Updated: August 10, 2021
edited by Joshua Whitehead
This anthology of speculative fiction showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer) Indigenous writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism's histories.
Readers will discover bioengineered AI rats, transplanted trees in space, the rise of a 2SQ resistance camp, a primer on how to survive Indigiqueerly, virtual reality applications, mother ships at sea, and the very bending of space-time continuums queered through NDN time. Love after the End demonstrates the imaginatively queer Two-Spirit futurisms we have all been dreaming of since 1492.
Contributors include Nathan Adler, Darcie Little Badger, Gabriel Castilloux Calderon, Adam Garnet Jones, Mari Kurisato, Kai Minosh Pyle, David Alexander Robertson, jaye simpson, and Nazbah Tom. (From Arsenal Pulp Press)
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Why Joshua Whitehead curated Love After the End
"Indigeneity, but more specifically queer or two-spirit Indigeneity, is always banished. With speculative fiction, we get to craft our own creation stories — and that's what I love about it.
"What I think the title does, and why we formatted the anthology the way we did, was to think about finality. When I think about finality, or the final "end stage," I think about it in the epistemologies I've been taught, whereas it's like a circle, but there's a little gap in between the circle.
With speculative fiction, we get to craft our own creation stories — and that's what I love about it. - Joshua Whitehead
"I wanted to convey that in the title, and keeping it in this continuum, even though we may be in a space that's ending with all kinds of the political strife that's happening across Turtle Island and the pandemic and economic collapse.
"Finality is just an opening into continuums and an opening into cyclicity."