In
fierce prose and poetic fragments, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s
Noopiming
braids together humor, piercing detail, and a deep, abiding
commitment to Anishinaabe life to tell stories of resistance, love,
and joy.
Mashkawaji
(they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering the sharpness of
unmuted feeling from long ago, finding freedom and solace in isolated
suspension. They introduce the seven characters: Akiwenzii, the old
man who represents the narrator’s will; Ninaatig, the maple tree
who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman, their
conscience; Sabe, a gentle giant, their marrow; Adik, the caribou,
their nervous system; and Asin and Lucy, the humans who represent
their eyes, ears, and brain.
Simpson’s
book As We
Have Always Done
argued for the central place of storytelling in imagining radical
futures. Noopiming
(Anishinaabemowin for “in the bush”) enacts these ideas. The
novel’s characters emerge from deep within Abinhinaabeg thought to
commune beyond an unnatural urban-settler world littered with
SpongeBob Band-Aids, Ziploc baggies, and Fjällräven Kånken
backpacks. A bold literary act of decolonization and resistance,
Noopiming
offers a breaking open of the self to a world alive with people,
animals, ancestors, and spirits—and the daily work of healing.