Reviews tagging 'Police brutality'

A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt

13 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

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

maeverose's review against another edition

The writing is beautiful but yet again, I don’t understand it. I tried to keep reading because it’s short but I’m really not getting much from it and I feel dumb so… dnfing unfortunately.

Here are some quotes that I liked though:

“In the museum of political depression, in its tidied halls, books of the sort I want to write are banned, for they are against the world that birthed the writer. Books that emerge from a banned way of thinking, that pry open space to live otherwise in an uninhabitable world, lie open in hospitals and university dorms and community libraries but rarely in an institution governed by a pessimism of the future and a romance of the present.”

“Loneliness is a kind of dysphoria with the world.”

“I have a phobia of the police. How could I trust he who disavowed personhood to instead be a gun? He who is bullets rather than an organism capable of nurturance? To be a gun is to be against life. I want to be for life and to be against that which is against life.”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content

Moderate: Colonisation, Murder, Racism, and Police brutality

Minor: Homophobia and Infidelity

moranguinhos's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Transphobia, Colonisation, Gun violence, Murder, Police brutality, Homophobia, Grief, Hate crime, Racism, and Suicide

wetdirtreads's review

emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Mass/school shootings, Gun violence, Racism, Hate crime, Homophobia, and Suicide

Moderate: Eating disorder, Medical trauma, Police brutality, and Transphobia

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

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

becksusername's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

4.0

This book was anything but simple. Belcourt is obviously a poet, and in these essays makes many hard-hitting points about life as an indigenous queer person in Canada with lots of big words I had to look up, startling metaphors, and round-about storytelling. It was a lot to process and there were many quotes I wrote down to think about more. Even so, I'm sure a lot of his meaning will have gone over my head.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Racism, Police brutality, Suicide, Sexual content, Medical trauma, and Mass/school shootings

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

marabdelmageed's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Truly one of the best pieces of work I have ever read. I will reread this, and then reread it again -- I know that I still have so much to gain, so much to learn, so much to appreciate from this work.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Fatphobia, Medical trauma, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Homophobia, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, and Suicide