Love after the End
An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction
Description
Lambda Literary Award winner
A bold and breathtaking anthology of queer Indigenous speculative fiction, edited by the author of Jonny Appleseed.
This exciting and groundbreaking fiction collection 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.
Here, 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.
Awards
- Winner, Lambda Literary Award 2021
Reviews
The so-called end times feel so perilously close right now. With such a cacophony of anxiety, despair, and cynicism bearing down on us, it is sometimes easy to forget that Indigenous peoples have been here before, and we still remain to uphold our responsibilities to the world and to one another. Our stories guide us forward into an ever-uncertain future, just as they guide us back home. And as editor Joshua Whitehead affirms in the introduction, Love after the End is a book we need right now - and well beyond the now. The stories here are difficult, they're beautiful, they're hilarious and sad and frightening and hopeful. But more than all of that, they guide us back to ourselves and to our relations on a shimmering trail of song and stardust. The two-spirit visionaries in this collection remind us in so many ways that the world is a wounded relative in need of healing, and that to abandon her in this time of trial is to betray the sacred bonds of kinship that we were meant to carry with courage and compassion. I am grateful beyond words that this book is in the world, and grateful to the writers, artists, and editor for the gift of (re)imagining futures where Indigenous love, liberation, and laughter flourish far beyond the settler imaginary. -Daniel Heath Justice, author of Why Indigenous Literatures Matter
Each of these smart, stunning, imaginative stories has not only fuelled my imagination but also filled my heart, reminding me how dramatically different it is to experience work written with absolute love. Reading Love after the End is like being handed a glass of fresh water in the middle of the desert. -Alicia Elliott, author of A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
Many of the stories offer portraits of a dead Earth from which new life springs, and all are ultimately uplifting, hinting at a way forward through the darkness of the present. Drawing on deep wells of history and experience, these powerful stories are sure to impress. -Publishers Weekly
These stories are a welcome breath of fresh air in the often hyperindividualist, survivalist subgenre of postapocalyptic fiction, and are essential reading for anyone committed to the possibilities of sf as a means to create new and different futures. -Booklist (STARRED REVIEW)
In these pages, survival is a collective exercise. And amid the chaos and instability of each tale, there are exquisite moments of intimacy depicted in every story, reminding the reader that love is always a reason to live. -Vancouver Sun
These stories show the ongoing tendril-like effects of colonialism but are not wholly defined by it. There is a potential beyond colonialism, beyond the apocalyptic, that lies in Indigenous love, two-spirit love, Indigiqueer love. -Chicago Review of Books