Ahjo's level of heart-based truth-telling is what the world needs most right now. I'm forever grateful that EarthBodyBoat: Queer Journey of a Somatic Earth Artist made its way into my life! This beautiful book is a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit.
— Quinn Alexander Fontaine, author of Hung Like A Seahorse: A Real-Life Transgender Adventure of Tragedy, Comedy, and Recovery
EarthBodyBoat is the artist’s journal and memoir
of Ahjo, a queer feminist. When a crisis erupts at a political event, Ahjo faces the possibility of needing to build a defense of their right to expose their naked female nipples as a means of artistic expression and resistance. In response, they build a boat that is this hybrid book—exploring multiple art forms, selves and bodies as they navigate the stormy waters between the personal and the political.
Along the way, Ahjo encounters ancestors, Baba Yaga, spirits of the land, The Crone, The Tree of Life, and a host of other travelers of liminal spaces who have much to say after generations of being silenced.
EarthBodyBoat journeys beyond the wounding of binary ways of thinking and gendering that fracture everything into parts, and, instead, offers the gifts of standing in the threshold with it all.
Growling River Books