Reviews tagging 'Genocide'

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

16 reviews

spookyaz's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Sexual content, Homophobia, Genocide, Mass/school shootings, Mental illness, Murder, Hate crime, Suicide, Police brutality, and Racism

maggiefae's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Grief, Homophobia, Mass/school shootings, Racism, Sexual content, Suicide, Transphobia, Colonisation, and Violence

jessie_h's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

This is one of those essay collections that I will stick be thinking about for a while. There is a lot in this collection to unpack and it was so beautifully written. Belcourt leans on his poetic background to tell parts of his story via essays and poems which results in an emotional sucker punch of a memoir. He touches on topics like queerness, indigeneity, sexuality, queer/NDN joy and hope, and colonialism and does so with a vulnerability and honesty. I want to read more from this author in the future.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Homophobia, Suicide, Racism, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Grief, Sexual content, and Cultural appropriation

Minor: Violence, Hate crime, Gun violence, Murder, and Genocide

readingwithkaitlyn's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Sexual content, Racism, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Homophobia, Mental illness, Medical content, Grief, Death, Hate crime, Genocide, Colonisation, Gun violence, Murder, Blood, Toxic relationship, Medical trauma, Violence, Suicide attempt, and Police brutality

Minor: Infidelity, Rape, and Transphobia

ecn's review against another edition

Beautifully written and extremely flowery with such emotion and depth. I would have loved to listen to an audiobook version bc of this. The writing made it hard to follow at time because it was so flowery/intense but overall really wonderful 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia, Toxic relationship, Colonisation, Grief, Genocide, and Violence

balfies's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

This lyrical, intricate memoir of queer Cree resistance made me weep. It also made me want to write poetry again.

Belcourt uses language to charter unnavigable oceans of queer and NDN experience within a capitalist white supremacist heteropatriarchy. 

Feel like I'm a bug on a forest floor with my mouth open in nutrient rich dirt, there's so much going on in this. If you're a fan of Ocean Vuong or Ellen van Neerven this is a must.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Colonisation, Violence, Sexual content, Suicide, Racism, Murder, Grief, and Homophobia

lizlikesfrogs's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Transphobia, Genocide, Homophobia, Gaslighting, Medical trauma, Hate crime, and Colonisation

cantfindmybookmark's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Genocide, Transphobia, Homophobia, Police brutality, Racism, Mass/school shootings, Suicide, and Colonisation

williamgideon's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective tense

4.5

It's taken me a while to be able to articulate my thoughts on this book. It's so unlike anything I've ever read, so unique in its form and subject matter. This book definitely is a lot to digest, despite only being 128 pages it took me 8 days to read. It is challenging, both in the subjects it deals with but also the way it is written.
This book deeply touched me, and there are passages that made me cry. Some of the essays are worthy of 5 stars, but others didn't hit as hard. My favorites were 'Please keep loving: Reflections on unlivability', 'Robert' and 'To hang our grief up to dry'.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Genocide, Suicide, Racism, Suicide attempt, Grief, and Murder

littlecat's review against another edition

dark reflective

2.0

The rating is much more about my reading expierince of this book then a value of it cause the prose was the kind of dense style that I had a hard time reading, there are concepts I encountered  already  ( “Books of the sort I want to write are banned, for they are against the world that birthed the writer.”) that  I like tried to mental hold onto to understand the book but - it felt too unfocused for it to work for me, the constant quoting of others just made me want to read someone else and the general bleak tone (which he of course is entitled to! just wasnt for me). 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Mass/school shootings, Colonisation, Sexual content, Racism, Suicide, Body shaming, Rape, Transphobia, Genocide, Police brutality, and Homophobia