Reviews

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

rachel_pck's review against another edition

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4.0

“The political climate in which art is made will determine whether poetry is a unit of accusation or revelation. I’m writing a literature of blame, for the record.”

A fragmented memoir(ish?) discussing colonialism and queerness. About 90% of the prose is astonishingly beautiful and poignant, but the remainder veers sharply into obscure and impenetrable territory.

hanawulu's review

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reflective

3.5

lsparrow's review

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4.0

"love of this sort, however, isn't about making a roadmap to another who then becomes your compass. It is a proposition to nest in the unrepayable and ever-mounting debt of care that stands in opposition to the careless and transactional practices of state power."

I can't say I liked this as a book/memoir but I find myself mulling over the ideas and words that seem to create a structure/genre of their own. I am left how I feel after having a long deep conversation - where I feel challenged and left with more questions that I am eager to ask of myself and the world. I also enjoyed how Belcourt references books and authors who have influenced his writing.

nicholesreadingnook's review

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0


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kattra's review against another edition

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medium-paced

3.0

therkive's review

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5.0

I have so rarely bought a book in the middle of my reading the ebook version because my online annotations were not enough. I needed to be able to pour myself into every line, every word Belcourt has written in this otherwise "short" essay collection. I think every non-Indigenous non-queer person, of all of the essay collections I have read thus far, should read this. Each line makes my lungs ache in expansion, ribs cracking with understanding of the loneliness Belcourt describes. The tragedies that befall Indigenous folk at the hands of heinous white people, especially the ideas passed down by colonization, are a noose that Belcourt so readily describes - the massacres in which governments dealt to expand their land for white people, a cage with which Indigenous people are still living within. I do not have anything save for praises for each passage in this book, so many that I will return to in the future as I existentially dwell upon my own loneliness and queerness and South Asian identity in a white-predominant society surrounded by those who colonized and murdered my own ancestors for centuries.

thesaltiestlibrarian's review

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challenging reflective slow-paced

2.0

As many people have already said, it's incredibly difficult to rate something like a memoir. (Unless you're James Frey, unapologetic pathological liar and narcissist. Then you're rating fiction.)

I'll be purely looking at the writing, then. I've done the academic circuit, and am about to dive back in for my Master's. One trend I've noticed with people who want to tell their story in academia is that it's easy for them to fall into the trap of "academic writing"--i.e. a lot of words that take three routes around Robin Hood's barn and then ultimately come up saying very little. It sounds pretty, sure. But it doesn't hit. It doesn't grip. It has few moments where it swoops in and promises to hurt you, to give you truth, but covers that truth in prose impenetrable to the layperson.

That is Belcourt's big failing here. Laypeople are going to want to read this book, and they're not going to understand what he's saying. Prose doesn't have to be boring or straightforward or easy. Cormac McCarthy is an excellent example. Sometimes one must reread in a McCarthy book, but in the end the meaning always becomes clear.

Art isn't always easy. It shouldn't be. But it should be accessible.

buttercat42's review

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Writing style just not for me

lucyyygibsonnn's review

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

4.5

A really full-frontal, nothing to hide challenging read that I couldn’t recommend enough. Beautifully written. My thanks to the author for putting down into words what they did.

yessybear's review

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0