This book is a gift to humanity.

I can usually find a caveat to "everyone should read this" and I think the only caveat I can find here is that you should read this when you have the brain space to go through the "kaleidoscope of portals spanning our most intimate lives, our communities, the broader terrain of struggle" (Maynard, p. 250). Both writers are academically trained, which shows - but it's more accessible than many academic texts because of the format and infusion of personal stories into the writing.

Maynard and Simpson write letters back and forth mostly during 2020 - using the portals opened up during early COVID-19 lockdown and the uprisings of the summer of 2020 in the so-called US and Canada as starting points to understanding the past and present of settler colonialism both in Canada and globally, and to imagine ways forward.

Black and Indigenous relations / prison abolition / Indigenous sovereignty and governance / nation vs nation-state / world endings and beginnings / communing / not handholding white and settler audiences / radical grief, reckoning, practices, and hope founded on living with reciprocity

Some quotes:

“To value collective livingness, to touch and know life fully, to know a life that is not in some way predicated on and subsidized by the suffering of another: I suspect that this is what liberation is.” (Maynard, p. 250)

“Nibi [water] reminds me that radical imaginings and world-building must international in orientation, reaching beyond Canada, beyond North America and beyond the Atlantic— not as an afterthought at the height of mobilization, but as foundational practice. This, of course, is something that the Black radical tradition, Black feminists, and Indigenous liberation collectives have been doing for decades.” (Simpson, p. 261)

Audiobook: I have been so grateful that more non-fiction and even academic texts have been on audio lately and I enjoyed the audiobook. I did have to get used to the difference in how they read and found it easier to listen to Maynard but it worked well that they each read their own letters.

READ THIS BOOK

Stone Butch Blues is queer/trans canon for a reason. It remains - frustratingly - an extremely poignant and familiar read in the so-called US in 2026.

Inter-generational found family / union organizing / solidarity across difference / butch, femme, transmasc and transfem communities / police violence / isolation / coming of age and aging / almost guaranteed to make you actually cry

I started this book a long time ago and was scared off by the pretty intense violence that Jess and her community face in the beginning of the book. I will say that the graphic on-page violence definitely lessens after the first few chapters and I’m so glad I came back to it.

This story is told through the first person narrative of Jess, a white, working class, Jewish butch woman/"he-she," over the first 4 decades of her life. The long time span, wide variety of characters and situations she encounters, and Feinburg's intimate writing style make this book feel deeply personal and emotional.

One of the core messages of this book is solidarity across difference - Jess' school as a kid, her many different warehouse jobs, and butch/femme bars are all key sites through which solidarity is explored. I found that Feinberg did a decent job with writing characters outside of her experience - there are many notable Black, Indigenous, femme, transfem, and cis man characters that make notable impacts on Jess' life (and vice-versa).

However, there were a few ways that I felt Feinberg fell short in writing across difference that I feel are important to point out. First, there are so so many characters in this novel that come in and out of Jess' life and of course Feinberg did that for a reason and it does very much help with the story telling, breadth, and isolation that Jess consistently deals with. However, the majority of the characters that remain in Jess’ life through the story are white. It can feel like, though many of the Black and Indigenous characters do have their own narratives/characters/arcs/lives, that in a way they do serve specific pedagogical functions in the story (though you could argue that for every character). I also think this is the most likely way that this character's life would have evolved, so I can't fault Feinberg much. However, there are some notable events that happen that I won't name due to spoilers that could have used a little more time and care especially given the race dynamics at play.

The biggest issue I see with this book is how Feinberg discusses Native communities and ideas. I was unsure and sometimes more uncomfortable than others when reading. I will say that for a book written by a white person and published in 1993, it is notable that Feinberg brings many Native people in the narrative, uses their actual Tribe names as opposed to those given to them by the US gov't, and names whose land much of the story takes place on. These are all reasons why this did not lead me to detract from my 5 star rating.

After I finished reading Stone Butch Blues, my partner told me that Mark Rifkin had written about it in his book When Did Indians Become Straight?, so I read his analysis and definitely recommend the essay to anyone reading this book. One of Rifkin’s main points about this book is captured well in this quote: “The novel’s construction of politically progressive collectivity relies on calling forth the tribal while hollowing it out, including erasing the persistent presence and political struggles of Six Nations peoples.” (Rifkin, 246). Interestingly, Rifkin reads Ruth’s father as being Seneca - if that’s true, she has the most page time of any BIPOC person in the book. Rifkin doesn’t discuss much about Jess’ continual invocation of her prized ring that was gifted to her by Diné women who partially raised her until she was 4, to protect her on her path as a non-binary person. I felt uncomfortable at times with the focus on the ring and the non-specific, one-directional spiritual protection it represents.

There is so much in this text that I’d love to discuss more but this is already by far my longest review on here. I’ll end with PUT THIS BOOK ON A QUEST!

A devastating, mind-bending vortex of essays/memoir illuminating the generational and very current trauma of existing as a Native woman in the so-called US.

This work blends memoir with pop culture analysis with place-based histories of colonization in New Jersey, Seattle and the surrounding areas, and Ohio to a lesser extent - and of course meditations on magic (widely defined) and time travel.

Some of the essays are heavier on pop culture references- including Fleetwood Mac, The Oregon Trail II (her recounting of playing this game with one goal being to meet fictional people from her tribe in the game was profound and heartbreaking), Twin Peaks/Twin Peaks The Return, and Red Dead Redemption. While I was able to follow along and remain interested during the pop culture portions of essays that drew on things I don’t know much about, I enjoyed the ones about familiar things more.

Audiobook narration: I find that memoir and memoir-adjacent books are better narrated by the author. It seems really difficult to narrate such a personal book with significant discussion of trauma. I found the narration fine, but at the beginning especially it felt a bit like she was reading something much lighter at times.

Definitely check the content warnings and take care with this one. CW for the rest of this review I am going to discuss some of what she relays about missing and murdered Indigenous women in some detail.

Washuta repeatedly tells us that she believes she will die by being murdered. She relays absolutely staggering statistics about the number of Native women who have been raped and sexually abused, and the statistics on who the abusers are - largely white men. In one survey she cites, every single Native woman respondent had been raped in her life. She also touches on the history of alcohol/ism within Native communities, which- surprising no one but those still fooled by the complete lie that is the US- was initiated by settlers and perpetuated by the ongoing trauma of 400 years of continuous genocide.

I highly recommend this book if you can take care re all the content warnings, and have some tolerance for non-linear writing.