Making Love with the Land

Reviews

"[Making Love With the Land] defies categorization . . . mov[ing] between genres and languages in a series of essays that open up a whole new window on the meaning of Canadian literature.” —Maclean’s

“Astonishing. . . . [Whitehead] defies every genre. His thrillingly cerebral passages delve as deeply into academic theory as they do into ancestral visions, legends and dreams. . . . [All] delivered with virtuoso aplomb.” —The New York Times

“Joshua Whitehead is one of those rare writers: he can turn his hand to any form and make it his own. . . . Making Love with the Land is a series of essays with a fluidity, as you might expect from Whitehead, between form and subject.” —Toronto Star

“Daringly experimental in form and refreshingly radical in message. . . . [Making Love with the Land] is a groundbreaking exploration . . . and a testament to the idea that our stories are so much more than our traumas.” —Xtra

“While some of the pieces [in Making Love with the Land] are celebratory, honoring the homeland implied in his title, others are mournful. . . . Throughout, Whitehead is a lyric poet writing in prose, proudly declaring himself to be “transgressive [and] punk”—and, very clearly, a survivor. An elegiac and elegant book of revelations, confessions, and reverberations.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Throughout Making Love with the Land, Whitehead traverses vulnerable and diverse subject matter, brilliantly uprooting explicit and implicit violences and personal and collective struggles, carving out a space for seeds of futurity to form. . . . The essays, collectively, are a lesson in how to love what is bad and what is hard, again and again, and a testament to the essential art of care.” —Hazlitt

“Defiantly artful . . . alert to so much of the beauty and theterror of the world . . . While reading, I was entirely overcomewith gratitude . . . A truly dazzling feat of heart, analysis,and sentence-making.” —Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A History of My Brief Body

“In this essay collection, Joshua Whitehead pushes at the possibilities of form, and the results are consistently a mix of the revelatory and the sublime. A chiaroscuro of self-questioning directed inward as a way to go outward—affectionate, resolute, playful, and wise. Brilliant lessons learned are on offer here, but more as an invitation to re-experience what you might not know you know.” —Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays

“In his latest “wonderwork,” Whitehead continues his signature and significant mission to undo colonial notions of genre, pushing the boundaries of memoir and cultural commentary into a wholly new, otherworldly terrain. Here, he makes love with body, kin, queerness, and music, demonstrating how making love isn’t just an act of pleasure, but also one of grief, pain and sometimes even solitude. A voice to listen to, learn from, cherish.” —Vivek Shraya, Author of People Change and I’m Afraid of Men Expand reviews