Description
Mackenzie Angeconeb (Aan-ji-qui-ni-ai’ib) is an Anishnaabekwe author and educator from Lac Seul First Nation. She reignited her love for writing while attending post-secondary studies and has since made her dream of being an author a reality. Between writing, beading, and painting, Mackenzie spends as much time as she can in nature and her community. She lives in Sioux Lookout and works as a Registered Early Childhood Educator.
“Trust the Mind, Destroy the Body” follows Bambi, a young Anishinaabemowin teacher who has spent over a decade locked in a brutal relationship with her eating disorder and is finally desperate to choose life over slow self-destruction. She grows up absorbing cutting comments about her body until controlling food becomes her only way to feel safe and worthy. Between the corridors of a small northern high school, volunteer shifts at a youth centre, and fleeting moments of warmth with friends and family, Bambi meticulously plans cycles of restriction, binges, and purges, even as they begin to threaten her health and career. The quiet care of her nurse roommate Jade, the memory of her former partner Dru’s love, and the echo of teachings and ceremony gradually force her to ask who she could be if she stopped defining herself by a number on the scale. Intimate, painful, and tender, this novel offers an unflinching look from inside chronic disordered eating—rooted in colonial trauma, family patterns, and bone-deep shame, while tracing a fragile but persistent hope in the daily, uncertain choice to recover.