Jonny Appleseed

The novel Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead was originally published in 2018 by Arsenal Pulp Press. Whitehead, a queer Indigenous writer from Peguis Frist Nation, uses the auto-fictional character of Jonny to explore the intersections of LGBTQ+ and Indigenous identity. The novel was a 2021 Canada Reads Winner and the winner of a Lambda Literary Award. It was also a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

This guide uses the 2018 ePub edition from Arsenal Pulp Press.

Content Warning: Several chapters in the book reference childhood physical abuse, explicit sexual acts, and one chapter references childhood sexual assault. These chapters are noted beneath the individual chapter headings.

Plot Summary

The novel follows the first-person narrator, Jonny, as he figures out whether he can make enough money from webcamming (or “camming,” broadcasting oneself over the Internet) to make it home to the reserve for his stepfather’s funeral. For camming, he uses Snapchat to put on individual shows for clients. Most often requested is Jonny dressing up like an Indigenous stereotype, in full regalia, and masturbating on camera. He seems to accept this wryly, knowing that it's part of how white Canadians fetishize him. Jonny identifies as Two-Spirit—a non-binary gender identity that is specific to Indigenous cultures. He has romantic and sexual relationships only with men, and especially with his childhood friend, Tias.

The narrative structure moves back and forth between the present day and stories in Jonny’s past. The anecdotes from the past largely focus on Jonny’s grandmother, his kokum, who played a significant role in both raising him and in teaching him how to be the person he is. His kokum accepted him for who he was, and they enjoyed exploring femininity together. His mother also accepted him, but she was harder on him. She tried to teach him not to let anyone else take anything from him for free, and that having bad experiences with alcohol was part of what it meant to grow up Indigenous. His mother was largely absent during his childhood due to her substance abuse, especially alcohol.

The childhood chapters about Tias illuminate the history of his relationship with Jonny. Tias’s adoptive father physically abused him anytime he expressed signs of femininity; as an adult, Tias refuses to consider himself gay despite regularly having sex with Jonny. He does not tell anyone else about his relationship with Jonny, although many of the other characters in the novel seem to be aware of it anyway. His girlfriend, Jordan, senses something is wrong—she physically assaults Jonny for sending sexually charged text messages to Tias. The kids on the reservation, where all three of them grow up, assault and demean Jonny. Sometimes Tias is forced to join in, though Jonny doesn’t blame him for it. Jonny and Tias tell each other that they love one another.

As an adult, Tias struggles to transition to life away from the reservation. He and Jonny continue their on-again off-again relationship, which only comes to a significant pause when Tias gets Jordan pregnant. They decide to keep the pregnancy though the novel ends before the child’s birth.

Over the course of the novel, the characters all struggle with the transition to adulthood. It’s hard to imagine a future on the reservation, but it’s equally hard for them to make their way in the world beyond it. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Jonny is discriminated against as an Indigenous person—shooed away from a convenience store as an assumed vagrant, threatened by his own neighbor as an assumed thief. Despite the difficulties, he doesn’t let life in the city discourage him. He enjoys the ability to visit queer-dominant spaces, which he was not able to access on the reservation. He still struggles with being Indigenous and queer; when other members of the LGBTQ+ community ask him where he’s from, he rarely shares that he’s Indigenous for fear of being fetishized or tokenized.

Jonny makes enough money to get a ride back to the reservation from an Indigenous woman who acts as an unofficial cab driver and who resells stolen goods to make ends meet. Though he ends up missing his stepfather's wake, he makes it back home in time for the funeral. He realizes that he doesn’t particularly care about his stepfather’s death for his own sake, but for the sake of his mother. Though he and his mother are still often at odds, they figure out a way to make peace with each other and move forward with a loving adult relationship.

At the end of the novel, Jonny realizes that the reservation is home, and that it feels like home to him. He’s only been away in Winnipeg for a couple of years, but the distance has helped him realize and deepen his sense of belonging to the reservation. The novel ends on this note of realization, and on Jonny’s resolve to move forward as an Indigenous Two-Spirit person.