Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - A History of My Brief Body

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

34 reviews

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.

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spookyaz's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

3.5

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tenderbench's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative relaxing tense medium-paced

5.0

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lizard800's review against another edition

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challenging medium-paced

3.5

This book is written by an academic for academics. Outside a university setting it doesn't make much sense. I will be picking up a physical copy of this book to re-read because I think you lose a lot in this one when it is audio. Also, I don't prefer BRB as a narrator.

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abysmaleen's review

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challenging emotional reflective tense slow-paced

2.75

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afailedlibrarian's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

I agree with everyone who says that theory weighed the message down, but I also see its use as a confrontation to singularity, as community-building. The author is joining a conversation. I wasn't going to rate this book at first, because it is so singular, I had nothing to compare it to. But two weeks later, I'll say this. The author's description of living as an idea while trying to assert your corporeality was breathtaking. The description of being born to a history that would not be able to comprehend you was heartbreaking. This will certainly require a re-read.

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maggiefae's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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sydapel's review against another edition

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challenging reflective sad slow-paced

4.75

I feel totally unmoored by this book. The writing is profoundly and intimately reflective, almost volatile in the pace it takes, swinging from rage to sorrow to longing to adoration so quickly. Belcourt speaks so profoundly about queerness, indigenous oppression in the Americas and his personal journey as a writer in these spaces. This is one of those books that requires slow reading and forces you to take a step back. The subject matter is difficult at times, but the number of quotes that will stay with me make it worth it.

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dominic_t's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

This book is really great and thought-provoking. His prose is beautiful and dense. I found some of it hard to wrap my head around, and I wish I had read this with other people so I could discuss it and understand more of it. He shows really clearly that the colonization of Canada has never stopped, even though white settlers pretend that colonization is all in the past. He discusses Indigenous trauma, resistance, and joy, and his writing is beautiful. This isn't an easy read, but it is worth it.

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jessie_h's review against another edition

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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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