Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

16 reviews

tenderbench's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative relaxing tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Sexual content, Colonisation, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, and Gun violence

dominic_t's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Suicide, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Murder

Trauma, residential schools

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

robotswithpersonality's review against another edition

challenging hopeful

A galvanizing series of essays that blur the line between memoir and think piece. The author is palpably a poet, in that I struggled to adapt to his gorgeously complex phrasing, but found it all the more affecting and informative for not coddling the reader. 
It is heartening to see Belcourt push towards a future of creative joy, while consistently elucidating all the ways in which the Canada of the past and present hampers the possibility of such a life experience for Indigenous people. 
Discussions of life as a queer man of colour likewise indicates the striving for love and the social and structural impediments to finding it. 
It is enjoyable to see a writer frequently touch on a sentence or two written by others, you get this sense of collaborative inspiration, of sharing ideas, when otherwise I worry that writing is isolating, in the search for a 'pure' inspiration not to be intermingled with words that might be claimed by another.
I think it's because I usually see it in research/journalistic non-fiction, seeing citation/quotes in a memoir provides hope of a full life,  reading and discussion between fellow writers. 
As with other non-fiction personal works written by Black, Indigenous and people of colour I have encountered as a white reader, I am reminded that reading alone will not suffice. Action must be taken, so that the liveable future so many minorities have long been fighting for and creating art to encourage into existence may become a reality, via the restructure of systems, (as well as hearts and minds), long incapable and seemingly uncaring, of meeting all citizens' needs. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, Hate crime, Suicide, and Suicidal thoughts

nibs's review

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

4.5

Belcourt's writing is so beautiful & precise & eloquent. I felt & learnt a lot about his experiences as an NDN queer man. 
I wrote down so many quotes because the writing is so beautiful. Learning about the specifics of Canadian colonialism (and thinking about how that compares to Australian colonialism), being in a body the state wants consumed. But also so much content on loneliness and queerness in a broader sense of community, collectivity and vulnerability as well, and how that intersects and interacts with his NDNness. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Racism, and Sexual content

Moderate: Homophobia, Sexual assault, and Suicidal thoughts

pawpaw's review against another edition

dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0

To call Belcourt's memoir "inspiring" or "emotional" feels like an insult; the level of his writing is indescribably rich, refreshing, complex, and needed. I would quote some of his most poignant lines, but that'd ruin the experience of coming across them naturally. 

Don't get me wrong: sometimes I rolled my eyes because of how much he used the word "ontological," and he can come off as pretentious, but so be it. With everything that he's been forced to deal with, with everything he's achieved? He's allowed to come off as a bit arrogant at times.

If you're triggered by suicide, sexual assault, murder, and the institutionalized destruction of Indigenous peoples, please tread carefully. That being said, this book is vital, and well beyond worth it. 

Please remember that there are many other Indigenous and queer voices. If you choose to listen to this one, don't stop there. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide attempt, Suicide, Sexual content, Colonisation, Suicidal thoughts, Hate crime, and Genocide

Moderate: Homophobia, Sexism, Racism, Murder, Cursing, and Grief

Minor: Sexual assault

kiaragennaro's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective fast-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Mass/school shootings, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Homophobia, Sexual content, and Suicide

vigil's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.75

this is a very personal book, deeply entrenched in his own experience that makes it difficult to rate.

billy-ray belcourt has a very strong and specific command of language, (in a way that likely intentional, judging by a later entry) that is enticing but also difficult to comprehend due its strong roots in academia. he has a very immersive writing style that transports you directly into his brain, for better or for worse. 

for personal enjoyment, it’s a 3 star, but i respect the author and what he’s doing with this collection that i bumped it up to a 4.75.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Rape, Genocide, Medical content, Medical trauma, Police brutality, Racism, Violence, Death, Grief, Homophobia, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Toxic relationship, and Transphobia

emma_b_rhodes's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

Poetic, theoretical, experimental. Queers genre. Really excellent. I marked so many pages and keep going back to it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Racism, Homophobia, and Self harm

Moderate: Suicide and Suicidal thoughts

paulrichard's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Sexual content, and Racism

Moderate: Homophobia and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Suicide