{"id":24162,"date":"2018-10-30T11:33:31","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T16:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metonymypress.com\/?p=24162"},"modified":"2018-11-05T13:33:57","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T18:33:57","slug":"vital-and-urgent-work-lindsay-nixons-nitisanak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metonymypress.com\/fr\/vital-and-urgent-work-lindsay-nixons-nitisanak\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Vital and urgent work’: Lindsay Nixon’s n\u00eetis\u00e2nak<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our newest title, Lindsay Nixon\u2019s n\u00eetis\u00e2nak<\/em>, launched this October to audiences and readers in Halifax, Montreal, and Winnipeg.
\n 
\nGovernor General’s Award\u2013nominated author Billy-Ray Belcourt describes it as “a tour-de-force of vulnerability, testimony, wit, camp, and critique” and we happen to agree.
\n 
\nn\u00eetis\u00e2nak<\/em> honours blood and chosen kin with equal care. A groundbreaking memoir spanning nations, prairie punk scenes, and queer love stories, it is woven around grief over the loss of the author’s mother. It also explores despair and healing through community and family, and being torn apart by the same. Using cyclical narrative techniques and drawing on Nixon’s Cree, Saulteaux, and M\u00e9tis ancestral teachings, this work offers a compelling perspective on the connections that must be broken and the ones that heal.
\n 
\nRead an excerpt here<\/a>.
\n 
\nIn an interview with Word on the Street<\/a>, Lindsay described their choice of title for the book:
\n 
\nn\u00eetis\u00e2nak means \u201cmy siblings,\u201d in Plains Cree. But it can also be used as a gender-neutral way of saying \u201cmy relations,\u201d generally.<\/i> n\u00eetis\u00e2nak is, at its core, a work that considers relationality manifested through my own experiences and connections. I like the gender-neutral form of relationality that n\u00eetis\u00e2nak expresses. My choice for the title of my memoir speaks to my particular interest to the queer-Indigenous ethics, life, and peoples I write about, and to my desire to queer Indigenous language, generally. Not that Cree needs much queering\u2014it\u2019s queer and sexy on its own, even if it\u2019s not always read as such.<\/i>
\n 
\nThe hometown launch of n\u00eetis\u00e2nak<\/em> on October 19 drew large crowds to PDB Bar Le Ritz. Opened by Dayna Danger<\/a>, it included readings by Arielle Twist<\/a>, Gwen Benaway<\/a>, and Kai Cheng Thom<\/a>, a brief discussion on what it’s like to be a Two-Spirit writer in so-called Canada today, and a closing reading by Lindsay of the first chapter of n\u00eetis\u00e2nak<\/em>, “Love Story Medicine.”
\n 
\n