Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies
Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award
Akiwenzii is the old man and their will. Ninaatig is the maple tree; they are their lungs. Mindimooyenh is the old woman who holds it all together; she is their conscience. Sabe, the honest sasquatch, is the marrow in their bones. Adik is the caribou and their nervous system. Asin, human, is their eyes and ears; Lucy, human, their mind. Together they are Mashkawaji, our narrator, who may be frozen stiff but still remembers a time of connection everywhere.
When Mashkawaji’s parts attempt to commune with the world around them, they find it’s a strange place, full of SpongeBob Band-Aids and branded coffee mugs. Exposing the unnatural solitude at the heart of settler-capitalism and fully grounded in Indigenous ways of being, Noopiming offers a moving and wickedly funny vision of what modern togetherness might look like – even as it breaks open the self to a world still alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits.
Read an ExcerptAbout the Book
- The White Review‘s 2022 interview with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is available to read on their website.
- You can read one of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s poems, ‘i am graffiti’ on the Poetry in Voice website.
- SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement (SFU VOCE) has a talk by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about dismantling the present moment on their YouTube channel.
- You can find out more about Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and her work on her website.
Print status: Pre-order
Author: Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Original language: English
Format: B format paperback
Publication date: 4 November 2025
ISBN: 9781916751354
Ebook ISBN: 9781916751361
Reviews
Maya Jaggi
The Guardian
‘Startlingly original . . . to read it is to be immersed not only in an alternative worldview, but in a storytelling aesthetic that is both challenging and innately familiar, in which humans, other animals and plants coexist and communicate on an equal plane . . . a profound corrective’
Ibtisam Azem
‘This moving and hybrid narrative crosses between prose and poetry, city and reserve, sky and lake, a continuous colonial past and an ominous present (dreaming of going all the way to Palestine!) The beauty and power of the author’s language blurs these borders, giving us a guide on how to re-read this cruel world with our hearts.’
Omar Robert Hamilton
‘The one, urgent, unifying, global cause is the need to decolonize. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is lighting the way.’
Preti Taneja
‘So precise, so intricate, so clear and urgent; Betasamosake Simpson weaves the voices in this beautiful novel into a profound call beyond the basics of our lives towards something truly free.’
Globe and Mail
‘This brilliant novel is a carefully curated mix of prose and poetry, though the narrative and poetic form never leaves either; at all times, there is a deliberate attention to rhythm, movement, and sound. The layered storytelling is rich with wry and undeniable humour and introduces readers to an incredible cast of characters, giving us the perspective of Elders, Indigenous youth, raccoons, geese, and trees, braiding together past, present, and future and intentionally centring Nishnaabe life and practices.’
Quill & Quire, starred review
‘Language is thrilling in Simpson’s work, and nowhere more so than in this newest offering. This novel will be reread for its many truths and teachings and for its undeniable power. The complicated questions Noopiming poses are worth revisiting, and the novel’s wisdom will continue to grow as the reader does.’
Dionne Brand
‘Noopiming is far ahead of us in so many registers of story, language, and worldview; its cumulative effect is a new cosmography.’
Omar El Akkad
‘Noopiming is a rare parcel of beauty and power, at once a creator and destroyer of forms. All of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s myriad literary gifts shine here — her scalpel-sharp humour, her eye for the smallest human details, the prodigious scope of her imaginative and poetic generosity. The result is a book at once fierce, uproarious, heartbreaking, and, throughout and above all else, rooted in love.’
Catherine Hernandez
‘This imaginative book is what would happen if we gave pen and paper to the deepest, most secretive parts of ourselves. Down to the fibres, down to each breath, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson dares to not only explore the humanity of a character, but the humanity of the parts that make us whole, in a world running on empty.’
Billy-Ray Belcourt
‘Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s Noopiming once again confirms her position as a brilliant, daring experimentalist and a beautiful, radical portraitist of contemporary NDN life. The prose hums with a lovingness that moved me to tears and with a humour that felt plucked right out of my rez adolescence. The chorus of thinkers, dreamers, revolutionaries, poets, and misfits that Simpson conjures here feels like a miracle. My heart ached and swelled for all of them. What I adored most about this book is that it has so little to do with the white gaze. Simpson writes for us, for NDNs, those made to make other kinds of beauty, to build other kinds of beautiful lives, where no one is looking. Noopiming is a book from the future! Simpson is our much-needed historian of the future!’
Katherena Vermette
‘How is it that Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s fiction can feel both familiar and warm like old teachings and absolutely fresh and brand new? Is it even fiction? Noopiming seems to exist somewhere in the in-between, with all the best parts of poetry and story. As always, I am in awe of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, prolific in every way.’
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
‘I’m pretty sure we don’t deserve Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. But miracles happen, and this is one. This book is poem, novel, prophecy, handbook, and side-eyed critique all at once. This book doesn’t only present characters you will love and never want to leave (but yes, it does), it doesn’t only transform the function of character and plot into a visibly collective dynamic energy field (and hallelujah), but it also cultivates character in the reader, that we might remember what we first knew. Which is that what seems separate was never separate. What feels impossible is already happening. And it depends on our most loving words. It requires our most loving actions towards each other. The ceremony has been found.’