Love after the End is a collection of “Indigiqueer” speculative fiction that is, speculative fiction written by those who identify as Two-Spirit as well as those who, as Whitehead writes in the introduction, “reject queer and LGBT as signposts of my identity, instead relying on the sovereignty of traditional language, such as Two-Spirit, and terminology we craft for ourselves, Indigiqueer” (pp.
Love after the End is a fantastic collection of speculative fiction, one that fills me with hope as much as it encourages me to think critically about our current reality, but it is a collection that does not exist in a vacuum. I will try not to make this mistake with Love after the End, however, because this collection is too important for our current time period. So sometimes, I end up not saying much at all whenever I read anthologies. When everything happens at once in my head, it may feel like a delightful chorus of voices, but to commit something to paper means that I risk hierarchizing the stories, favouring some details over others, and by implication, some authors, some narratives, and some perspectives over others. The problem with this method of review is linear time. The urgency to talk about everyone’s work, as fast as possible, inevitably starts to feel like a mission that I mustn’t fail. This is especially the case for anthologies that deal with the end of the world, as Love after the End does. The multiplicity of stories often means a multiplicity of narrative voices, and any time I sit down to write a review it feels as if someone has shouted “fire” in the theatre of my brain, and everything I want to say is running towards the exits. An overflow of sentiments and thoughts often happens when I review anthologies. I have a lot of things to say about Joshua Whitehead’s Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction.
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