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storytold's review against another edition
Will eventually return, just front loaded too many memoirs in my reading year.
claudiaslibrarycard's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
After reading a poetry collection by Billy-Ray Belcourt, I was eager to read this essay collection. A History of My Brief Body dives into topics around queerness, being indigenous, and surviving in a post-colonial society.
I found the writing style dense and the first half of the book I spent adjusting to Belcourt's writing style in this context. As I adjusted, it did become easier to read. This is a verbose book in a small package. Belcourt is highly intelligent and speaks to the reader as though they are as well. I appreciated that he wrote about difficult and complex subjects with the complexity they deserve, but maybe yes I'm just not as smart as him.
I found the writing style dense and the first half of the book I spent adjusting to Belcourt's writing style in this context. As I adjusted, it did become easier to read. This is a verbose book in a small package. Belcourt is highly intelligent and speaks to the reader as though they are as well. I appreciated that he wrote about difficult and complex subjects with the complexity they deserve, but maybe yes I'm just not as smart as him.
julieh46's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
noahcecol's review against another edition
challenging
medium-paced
2.5
- Honestly read "thesaltiestlibrarian"s 2 star review. It encapsulates most of what I was thinking while trying to read this
- As they^ say, I am also not critiquing someones personal story and lived experiences
- but this was a little beautiful and largely confusing
- so many run on sentences and you need a dictionary to read them
- also the various critiques and issues make so much more sense when you realize he was writing about youth/early 20s experiences that all happened relatively recently and published in his early/mid 20s.
- As they^ say, I am also not critiquing someones personal story and lived experiences
- but this was a little beautiful and largely confusing
- so many run on sentences and you need a dictionary to read them
- also the various critiques and issues make so much more sense when you realize he was writing about youth/early 20s experiences that all happened relatively recently and published in his early/mid 20s.
elliott_roi's review against another edition
5.0
So thought-provoking and gorgeously written. Definitely need to reread and annotate!
drraytay's review against another edition
I have never felt so stupid while reading a book in my life. The first half was easy enough to understand but the second half ate me alive. There were large chunks of text so academic I was having flashbacks to learning how to read medical journals. If I was a Scientologist, it would take me YEARS to clear enough words to fully understand this book. I am not exaggerating.
The author casually uses words like aleatory and elegiac. Ontological is used seven times. There’s an essay in this book in which the author rejects simplicity in writing and, let me tell you, he has succeeded. If you can decipher the word soup of these two passages, I give you a standing ovation.
“There is no ontological difference between the dumpster and me. We are mimetically liminal, both purged of ethical matter. To be young and in love in a dumpster, in the constitutive outside of the present, is a manifestation of melancholia.”
“Utopia isn't a feeling but rather the banished shape of an ur-feeling. It is in one valence submerged in an ethics of privacy. Invisibilized, utopia is against a sovereignty of the senses. In a more politically rousing valence, it is incommensurable with publicness, being instead an unownable thing that barks back at the interpellative shout of property.”
My spell check didn’t even understand three words in that last quote. Google barely got that I was searching for the meaning of ur-feeling and instead gave me articles about understanding your feelings.
I am by no means shitting on this book. I think many of the essays are powerful and vital to understanding the queer Native experience. I’m just not smart enough to understand it all.
The author casually uses words like aleatory and elegiac. Ontological is used seven times. There’s an essay in this book in which the author rejects simplicity in writing and, let me tell you, he has succeeded. If you can decipher the word soup of these two passages, I give you a standing ovation.
“There is no ontological difference between the dumpster and me. We are mimetically liminal, both purged of ethical matter. To be young and in love in a dumpster, in the constitutive outside of the present, is a manifestation of melancholia.”
“Utopia isn't a feeling but rather the banished shape of an ur-feeling. It is in one valence submerged in an ethics of privacy. Invisibilized, utopia is against a sovereignty of the senses. In a more politically rousing valence, it is incommensurable with publicness, being instead an unownable thing that barks back at the interpellative shout of property.”
My spell check didn’t even understand three words in that last quote. Google barely got that I was searching for the meaning of ur-feeling and instead gave me articles about understanding your feelings.
I am by no means shitting on this book. I think many of the essays are powerful and vital to understanding the queer Native experience. I’m just not smart enough to understand it all.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual content, and Colonisation
Moderate: Suicide
Minor: Ableism
kitta's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.0